A heartfelt return: Revisiting our beloved elders at the Karuna Elder’s Home.

Aging is a universal truth. As living beings, old age is a destined phase that we all must go through at a certain point of our lives. Unfortunately, not everyone is quite fortunate enough to live out this dreaded period of their life surrounded by the love, affection and care of their family and loved ones…

This is where we, the Rotaract Club of the Faculty of Law come into action with our initiative, ‘Senehase Nagam’, a mission to restore the dignity and sense of belonging of abandoned and orphaned elderly. This August, we decided it was time to revisit our beloved achchis and seeyasat the Karuna Elder’s Home at Boralasgamuwa.

We went there straight away after lectures finished but not with empty hands of course. We received generous donations from our members ranging from food items to home baked goods! All of it went into the preparation of the evening tea and snacks for the elders at home who were eagerly waiting for our arrival. We went there with a couple of fresh faces who had never stepped foot in an elderly home and the regulars who had already bonded with the elders and knew all about them.

For the elders, this was no typical Thursday evening. It was the first time in months that some of them had visitors. They showered and put on their best clothes and sat wherever they could in the living room, readying themselves to greet us with open arms. We spent the evening chatting with them sitting side by side, letting them steer the conversation from dhamma to politics and so on. One grandma pointed at our president and said “I used to have a son like you”, we initially thought the son was dead but later on realised that he was still alive but simply got too busy with life to make time for his poor mother. I couldn’t help but notice the drops of tears forming in her sorrowful eyes. Sadly, this is the reality for many in elderly homes.. By being there with them and putting ourselves in their shoes, it made us realise that this could be any one of us someday and when that happens, we too will have to depend on the grace and goodwill of others.

So, the main takeaway from this visit is that we need to be kinder and more compassionatetowards the elderly, because as the famous saying goes ‘you get what you give’. And who knows, one day we too might be sitting in a rocking chair waiting for some fellow rotaractors to come visit us and lend us an ear..