How to Treat Elders

I grew up in a house where silence was louder than words. Not the awkward silence of strangers, but the kind that echoed love, wisdom, and patience. My grandfather lived with us for the first seventeen years of my life, and though he rarely raised his voice, his presence filled every room he entered. He taught me how to treat elders—not with obligation or politeness, but with a deep, personal reverence born from understanding who they are, and what they carry.

It didn’t start that way. When I was younger, I saw my grandfather as someone who belonged to another world. He didn’t understand smartphones, wasn’t interested in the latest movies, and still read newspapers with yellowing pages. I often brushed off his stories, rolling my eyes when he repeated them. At family dinners, I’d nod absently as he spoke, my mind wandering elsewhere. I loved him, yes—but I didn’t listen to him.

That changed the summer I turned sixteen.

He’d begun to slow down. I noticed it in small ways: the way he hesitated at the stairs, the longer naps he took in his armchair, the faraway look in his eyes when he thought no one was watching. That summer, my parents asked me to stay home more and help him out. I groaned internally—I had plans. Friends. A world outside our quiet little home. But I nodded, and stayed.

One afternoon, as I helped him tend to the small garden in our backyard, he turned to me and said something that shifted my world.

“Do you know how many people I’ve buried, child?”

I paused, unsure of what to say. His voice was calm, not sorrowful.

He continued. “When you get to be my age, you stop counting birthdays and start counting goodbyes. And every goodbye teaches you how to treat those who are still with you.”

We sat on the garden bench for over an hour that day. He told me stories he’d never shared before—of friends lost to war, of a brother who never came home, of a wife whose absence still hurt more than any wound. He didn’t cry. He didn’t need to. His voice carried decades of grief and love all wrapped into one quiet melody.

That was the day I began to truly see him.

From then on, I stopped rushing our conversations. I began asking him questions, even when I thought I knew the answers. I brought him his favorite tea and asked for his advice—not because I had to, but because I wanted to hear his thoughts. I wrote down his stories in a notebook, capturing not just facts, but feelings: the texture of his memories.

And somewhere along the way, I realized what it truly meant to honor our elders.

It’s not about calling them on holidays or offering them your seat on a bus—though those things are kind. It’s about listening. Really listening. Understanding that their lives didn’t start when you were born. They’ve lived entire worlds before us—seen revolutions, felt heartbreaks, survived storms. They have wisdom etched into their wrinkles and poetry in their pauses.

Treating elders with respect isn’t a chore—it’s a privilege.

We live in a society obsessed with youth. We glorify the new, the fast, the now. But in our rush to become, we forget those who already are. Elders are living libraries, and when we neglect them, we burn pages of history we'll never get back.

My grandfather passed away two years ago. The garden is quieter now. But sometimes, when the wind brushes past the rosemary bush he loved, I swear I hear him say, “Remember the goodbyes.”

And I do.

Because every elder we meet is someone else’s memory in the making. And how we treat them today writes the stories we’ll someday wish we could revisit.