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Introduction
Most people who write about the elderly, their problems and concerns, have never themselves been elderly. Nevertheless, they write profusely and give advice about what is, to them, an unknown dimension of life. That certainly cannot be said about your authors! We have travelled life's road and experienced its turmoil and travail. We have known sickness and disease, suffered bereavement and sorrow, sustained life's defeats and also tasted the sweetness of success.
Each older person will represent a challenge to you, a personal challenge to become his friend, perhaps the only person he can truly call a friend. Melville H. Nahin in an article, "The Problem Solver" in New Age magazine, March 1983, compares life to a train ride. As we grow older and come to the end of our ride, the friends of yesteryear, the weaker ones who boarded the train with us at the same station, seem suddenly to have all disappeared. They got off the train here and there as the ride progressed. Suddenly, the older person looks around and sees that all the seats are empty: his friends are no more! Then it is that older people become consciously aware that they are devastatingly alone. The knowledgeable practitioner, the one with a social empathy, can often have the privilege of stepping in and filling this often unplanned-for void.