Book of the Moment: If I Live to Be 100 by Neenah Ellis
Neenah Ellis
Excerpt from chapter 3 "Mona Breckner: 'I Tried to Do My Part'"
Now her many nieces and nephews and their many children look in on her regularly, celebrate holidays with her, call her on the phone.
"They're my family now and they're very, very precious to me," she says seriously. "One niece feels as if I were her mother. We're very close."
She is around young families enough to have a strong opinion about what's wrong with the American family today.
"I think that women are not taking responsibility for family life as my parents did. My mother had a great deal of influence on my life, and I never could thank her enough for the feeling that she raised me with—the sharing feelings that I have about everybody. I think there's something lacking today. I think it's partly because the mother's attention has been pulled aside by the suffrage deal and the fact that they can go out and earn a living. And I think our whole country—private life, public life, everything—has swung more to the financial aspect of life, not for the creative and wonderful things that life can offer."
"You think people are too interested making money?"
"That's right. I think that greed has gotten to the point where it ought to be curbed. I don't know why people should be able to earn—indefinitely—huge amounts that they never, never use, to the complete rejection of scattering it so that people everywhere can get some benefit. I think it's too one-sided. Everything is going over to the financial side of the picture and not about what life is for."
"Which is what?"
"Well, it's to share. The big thing in life is to share. Everything. Responsibilities as well as all of the good things. I think there's a sharing that's not participated in as much as it has formerly been. That's the selfishness of the current age. I mean sharing what you have to offer. Making it count. Because everybody has some of that, you know?"
Mona sighs deeply. She is getting tired. Suddenly I realize that I have not planned this day very well. She's telling me the meaning of life, for goodness sake, and I'm watching the clock.
The elderly are abandoned, and not only in material instability. They are abandoned out of a selfish incapacity to accept their limitations that reflect our own limitations, because of the numerous difficulties that must be overcome in order to survive in a society that does not allow them to participate, to have their say, or be referents in the consumer model of ‘only the young can be useful and enjoy’. These elderly persons throughout society ought to be a reservoir of wisdom for our people. The elderly are the reservoir of wisdom for our people! How easily the conscience falls dormant when there is no love!
—Pope Francis
