COMMENTARY : The Indignity of Being Old : The uncertain present and an even more uncertain future make the past seem a safe refuge to the elderly.

To live in the past and the future is easy, Walker Percy said in “Lancelot,” but to live in the present is like threading a needle.

Like so many others who are widowed, elderly and alone, I frequently find the present depressing and even frightening. I worry about physical incapacitation, Alzheimer’s and death. I have lost so many close friends and family members that I have stopped counting. My daughter and her family are 3,000 miles away, but seeing them briefly each summer and speaking to them on the phone offers some solace. My daughter has asked me many times why I do not move near them, but they have their own lives to live, just as I have mine here in California.

My most durable companions are my four cats, whose quiet independence is of great comfort to me at a time when so many important things seem to be slipping away. Sometimes in their presence I can almost forget about the loneliness, the patronizing, the discrimination I experience as a senior citizen. For these things do exist, and to deny them, to stress only the joys of the “golden years,” is like burying our heads in the sand. Change only will come when we face the truth, and the truth is that seniors are dehumanized in countless ways.

I know that ageism in the form of job discrimination exists because I have encountered it. For many years, I worked in some phase of the publishing industry, as researcher, writer and copy editor. When I was younger, I received so many offers from publishing companies that I was forced to turn down assignments. But when I reached retirement age, the assignments began to fall off even though I indicated that I wanted to continue working and my work was generally commended. Simply put, when it came to a choice between me and a young person of equal qualifications, the younger person won out almost every time.

The pattern is clear. We tend to think in stereotypes when dealing with the aged, just as some still conjure up prejudices about women or racial minorities. Old people are thought to be slow, intellectually impaired, ill-tempered, complaining, childlike. These stereotypes give people an excuse to patronize us. Why, for instance, are we called by our given names by those in the medical profession--some young enough to be our grandchildren--who flaunt their “doctor” title as though it belonged up in marquee lights? Why do restaurants seeking the business of seniors run such pathetic ads urging us to take a little time from our busy lives and come here because they have a special senior menu and we’ll always be welcome. And why the familiar terms “honey,” “sweetheart” and “dear” delivered to us by absolute strangers? To treat an older person as a child is not being generous or kind or even very smart.

My mother was treated as a difficult child in the nursing home where she spent her last days--a home that had been highly recommended by her doctor. At first I ignored her complaints that the patients were often ridiculed or mistreated. Then I saw a nurse’s aide forcing a pill down my mother’s throat; the staff doctor and a nurse loudly joking about whether it was safe to pull down my mother’s bed covers, embarrassing my mother, who understood why she was being ridiculed; a nurse threatening her with the discomfort of intravenous feedings when she was too ill to eat. Just as I was making plans for other arrangements for her, her condition worsened. She was hospitalized and died a few days later.

I know that some nursing homes are trying to improve conditions for their patients. For some like my mother, however, their efforts are too little, too late.

So it’s small wonder that many of us “oldsters” take refuge in the safe harbor of the past when the present looms as degrading, threatening and empty and when only one certainty awaits us.