Number Our Days

The film. Number Our Days, was very touching. It made me realize how sad aging could be, because if you are lucky enough to live to an old age then you are also unfortunate enough to suffer through great losses as everything around you changes.

Barbra Myerhoff showed how the elderly have to come together for support, because society abandons them in their slow, old age. It is a harsh reality that Myerhoff  revealed, because often times the elderly give up everything to raise their children, yet throughout the whole documentary not a single child was seen. It seemed like not only had society abandoned the elderly, but that their own families had too.

Myerhoff ended the documentary saying, "Aging is not death, but there is a certain peace in death and aging is a part of that." However, I wonder if the participants in the film would agree with her, because it seemed like to them aging was just the highway to death and it was filled with loss, hurt, and a feeling of abandonment. I never saw them look peaceful, as Myerhoff describes. Even at the parties they attended, all of the elderly had a burnt-out look in their eyes. It was like they knew their time was near, and the party was just to fill the gap between being alive and being dead.

I hope that Myerhoff's film opens the eyes of society, or at least those who watch it, to the fact that the elderly are so burnt-out because they spent so much of their life pushing the younger generations to the goals they need to reach. It is a shame that so many of America's elderly are forgotten instead of cherished. They may be slow and "stuck" in another generation, but they don't deserve to be forgotten and surrounded by loss - especially the loss of those who are still living and able to help and love them.