The years go by and so does love.

When I was young I always thought some things in advance. I used to say to myself, does my father not think that I will ever be an adult? Does he think that I won't grow up, work or have my own ideas?

These thoughts came to my mind when, without any reasoning, he wanted to impose his views on me, which didn’t make sense to me.

Something like, “I shouldn't continue studying at the university because I should stay home to take care of my mother when she needed it” Or something like… “Why did you want to buy a car for yourself if I already have mine and it's enough for everyone?”

So many things that I could not refute him… And if I did I would earn his physical punishment, which was very painful. So I learned to be quiet and not to complain when it was about my “well-being” I learned to keep quiet many times not out of respect but out of fear… Well, it’s more like I did it to not panic.

But what happened over time…? When I started working I immediately saved what I could to buy my first car. When the car came home, my father realized that I had fulfilled my own personal desire.

I cite these things because sometimes I see the behavior of adults towards their children and I don't think they realize that their children will grow up and at some point in their lives they will have to discern about the behavior they wanted to impose on their children but didn't succeed in doing.

We all have our own personality. As we grow up, whether we are supported or not by our parents nothing will prevent us from becoming independent at some point in our lives and coming out with our own way of seeing the world.

But it happens that this is only a small detail of the traumas that we manage to accumulate in childhood, when we fail to develop our own personality because we have learned to maintain a personality that is not our own.

I see some older adults who often complain about how their children treat them now that they are old. Seeing the life that some of these children had at home, with impositions, a lack of support and encouragement, and so on… I can think that these children, now that they are older, prefer or don’t want to support their parents anymore, and then when they reach old age they will still be alone.

But they are not alone because they are now old and gray, they’re alone because their children grew up and they no longer accepted their impositions of their parents, because they didn’t tolerate any more mistreatment.

Growing up without love and having only restrictions and impositions from parents will only bring resentment in children. Most likely, these children will no longer want to know about their parents and, as a result, will make them spend their old age in as much loneliness as they can. Something that they themselves didn’t think could happen to them.

I don’t support leaving the elderly alone, that they spend their last years in solitude, despised and even forgotten by their relatives and children. But at the same time, isn't it true that there is a phrase that says that you reap what you sow?

There’s another phrase that says that “If you sow the wind you reap the storm” We can’t think that if we mistreat our children by not taking care of their frustrations, of their health, not appreciating their decisions or their opinions they’ll welcome us with open arms when it’s our turn to go through our vulnerable age. It’s then we’ll see that there is no respect, no love and no loving approach from our children. It’s simple, we just didn’t encourage love, we didn’t give importance to the details that our children needed and now they no longer need us and we are left discarded.

It’s a terrible situation that I often see in daily life. Some people, like myself, think and say that we don’t like to see the elderly alone when they still have their children. But is it really possible to live with a person with whom we have no bond of love…? I think that's why there are so many lonely elders.

 We children didn’t learn to love our parents because our parents didn’t care to embrace us, to talk about the love and respect that ages deserve.

A child deserves respect, a parent deserves respect. And when there is an elder in the family, that person also deserves all the respect for his or her old age.

But if this elder did not sow… how can he reap? 

It is a very difficult situation to see. We appreciate the elderly because they are very vulnerable people and we don't understand why they are so lonely and so weak, but we don't know what sad situations surround their lives.

Please, let us avoid being forgotten by our children. Let's embrace them, let's give love to our kids, and let’s talk with them about what they would like to be in the future, about what their desires in life are. Let us be a part of their life, a good part, the one that they enjoy mentioning in their life stories.

Let them say things like “We’ll visit you as much as we can and your grandchildren will love you as much as we love you” that's very important to hear. Let's bond with them when we can while we can and not regret it later in when we’re all alone.