Cybergrandparents step over the generational divide
July 9, 2010
Susan Pigg
LIVING REPORTER
Jack Driedger was checking email in his Saskatoon seniors’ apartment first thing one morning when a message hit his heart.
It was painfully to the point and from an 11-year-old stranger. He’s not even sure where she lived.
“All my friends are having sex and I’m thinking of trying it,” Driedger recalled of the email.
It didn’t take long for the 84-year-old former high school guidance counsellor to peck out his online words of wisdom.
“How many times can you have sex for the first time? That’s something where there’s only one chance.”
Driedger is a real grandparent to two grown children, and a cybergrandparent to countless others. He’s among more than 600 “elders” — they range in age from 60 to 105 — who gingerly step across the generational and technological divide each day via the website www.elderwisdomcircle.org.
The site gets about 3,000 emails a month, many of them from teenagers and young adults just looking for someone with the time to listen to their problems, lend a sympathetic ear and offer some objective advice.
“A lot of seniors really love this, especially older seniors who feel that nobody needs them anymore,” says Doug Meckelson, 49, who started the non-profit website seven years ago after feeling the loss of his own grandparents.
“They really like the idea of being able to volunteer in their pyjamas at 7 o’clock in the morning,” he says with a laugh.
Driedger logs on to the San Francisco-based site frequently each day, doing what he can to ensure each email is answered within 72 hours, be they from a teenager struggling with an alcoholic parent or a college student fearful their roommate may be suicidal.
“I often say to them that although it’s been a long, long time since I was a teenager, I remember what it was like,” says Driedger. “You have to make a choice who you’re going to be. I had to make that choice too.”
Dredger’s personally replied to about 3,000 of the 200,000 “letters” the site has handled so far, some of them so detailed and lengthy that Meckelson can’t bring himself to call them mere emails.
“We do realize that more people are moving to text messages and tweeting, but that’s not really what we’re about,” says Meckelson. “We like when people send us lots of information because it means we can give a better response.”
Of course, for many of the elders that’s meant a crash course in a new-age language, one with catchphrases like eating disorders, self-mutilation and cyberbullying.
While the teens who type are keenly aware they’re chatting with someone from another time and place, for many these “cybergrandparents” seem like the only family they’ve got: Many will email later to say it made them cry that someone took so much time and seemed to care, says Meckelson.
Kingston resident Terry Langlois, 71, signed on to the site (there’s a rigorous approvals process for new elders) more than six years ago, after a career as a professional therapist.
While she finds this far more challenging than face-to-face counselling, where body language can be as critical as the spoken word, she loves “the ripple effect” of knowing that helping the person at the other end of the mouse may also help their children, their parents or their friends.
“I also believe that it helps just to write out what’s going on because that can help a person focus. It can give them some insights,” says Langlois, who comes to the computer table with decades of experience as a mother of four and a grandmother of 11.
Meckelson credits his grandmother for giving him the idea for the site.
“She was one of those very inspirational people. I always enjoyed being around her and getting that comfort you get from a grandparent. But she really had this fear of being frail and not being viewed as active and vital anymore.”
He was equally concerned she would end up in a nursing home (she died before that happened), cut off from the community.
That’s why Meckelson also has created “elder circles” — committees of seniors in retirement homes and long-term care facilities who hash over queries as a group.
It’s hard to know who gains more from the site — the seniors or those needing some sage advice.
Meckelson tells the story of “Elder Buttercup” (each senior picks their own moniker), an 87-year-old who was in a wheelchair, had suffered enormous hardship in life — including the death of her son — but had such a positive attitude toward life that some people would email, requesting her advice specifically.
“She really gravitated toward the teen letters. She was savvy and gave really good, practical advice,” says Meckelson.
Last year, as she spent the last week of her life in a hospital bed, Elder Buttercup contacted Meckelson, concerned that her online advice would be coming to an end.
“You don’t understand,” she told Meckelson just days before her death, “I need these people asking me for help more than they need me.”
Sage Advice from the Everyday Wise
It all started with Frank and Abe, two octogenarians who had lived life and had lots to say about it.
When Los Angeles writer and actor Seth Menachem met the good friends, now 89 and 90 respectively, walking around his neighbourhood, he was determined to immortalize their words of wisdom — okay, maybe more their kibitzing and complaining.
Since Menachem, 36, created Life Advice from Old People, his salute to seniors in June 2009, he’s asked more than 90 older folks for their life advice, including actor Jon Voight.
“Maybe it’s because my dad died when I was young and my grandparents are no longer around . . . I just thought they had some good advice and I wanted to preserve it.”
With the exception of “be one of the good guys” Voight, who he happened to spot dropping off a friend in the Fairfax district when Menachem lives with his wife and two-month-old baby, these are just everyday folks.
Some of them are newcomers to the country who don’t even speak English — their children do it for them.
But their words are simple and heartfelt. And their faces practically light up as they speak, once they get over the shock of being stopped by a complete stranger with a flip camera (a birthday gift from Menachem’s unsuspecting sister.)
Recently Menachem posted his favourite life advice so far, some of the best of it from neighbour Molly Pier, 89, who became an AIDS activist late in life after losing her son:
“You know, we don’t have much choice in many, many things that happen in our lives. The only thing we have choice over is our attitude and how we accept things that happen and how we cope with them.
“And that’s what you have to learn . . . coping with the hard things in life and loving and appreciating the good things that happen.”
Susan Pigg focuses on issues about aging and baby boomers. spigg@thestar.ca