When I was riding a bus in northern Thailand, winding our way up a vomit-inducing dirt road lacking guard rails or lane dividers, I could hardly think of anything but reaching destination and ending the two-hour-turned-four-hour bus ride from hell. There were twenty seats for 32 people, and sacks of rice filled the aisle (the rice sacks doubled as extra seats). A teenage girl and her mother leaned against the back wall, sick from the ride and sweaty from the heat, swaying as the bus swung side to side. The girl looked like she needed to lie down, her mother, too, but they didn’t because they had given their seats for a woman nearly twice their age that she might bear the ride better than them. In Thailand, age is everything.

From what I’ve observed, Thais have a way of thinking that inverts our entire perspective as a society in the US. Their language and greetings are based upon a hierarchy of age, and their cultural norms demand respect and care for elders as a daily practice. The bus episode was not the first, or the last, of its kind that I would witness in Thailand. Thais have utter reverence for their ancestors and elders, and focus their gratitude not on the people who will lead them into the future, but those who launched them into the present.

I expressed this observation a few weeks ago as I talked to Janie Pemble from Interfaith Coalition Friendly Visitors. Americans don’t care enough about the elderly, I told her, fairly bluntly. I expressed a feeling that aside from senior citizen discounts on coffee and underfunded senior centers, seniors are a part of our society that is, in large part, forgotten. Coming from a position which relies on maintaining a faith in the opposite opinion, she disagreed. Janie works with elderly people in the community who are isolated and need company, and while she agrees that there is a widening gap between clients and the volunteers who help them, she affirms that Americans do care. She did agree, however, that the consequences of isolation are often underestimated.

Interfaith Coalition Friendly Visitors is a program geared to address that circumstance. Created for elderly adults who are distanced from friends or relatives, Friendly Visitors opens a social outlet for elderly who would otherwise not have one. As clients come in to Interfaith, they are interviewed about their interests and hobbies; the same is done with volunteers. And ideally, if the best case scenario prevails, a match is made and a friendship created, some of which last for years. The problem, of course, is that the best case scenario doesn’t always pan out. And the loneliness that prevails couples with depression, failing health, and a decline in morale for isolated elderly.

Janie told me some clients wait for up to six months on the list for a volunteer who would make a mutually beneficial match. Picture an 84-year-old man who’s spent most of his life fishing, hunting, and working with other men. He wants to visit with someone who can relate. A predominantly-female list of volunteers does not seem to suit him, but loneliness is a painful alternative, and females are the volunteers who are stepping forth.

But Janie’s stories weren’t all cases of despair; many, in fact, were the heart-warming variety that appear in Reader’s Digest. People care, she claimed, and change is happening. Just not enough of it.

So, like anyone else, I can be swayed. Janie’s unwavering faith in our society proved to have some effect on me; I left Friendly Visitors with a different concern: the issue at hand, I assume, is gaining the momentum that Janie believes is possible. If the empathy and compassion exists, we are missing another crucial component: generosity. In effect, I’m calling for a surge in volunteerism, not strictly to Friendly Visitors, but to volunteering in general. We are a society that can afford to give back, and we should. Think about your parents, your grandparents, your mentors and your friends and your colleagues: we will all age, that much we know. But whether we will all feel a meaningful connection until our final days is up to us. Start the trend now.

To volunteer, call the Whatcom Volunteer Center: (360) 734-3055.