Their bones are brittle and so are their dreams, gone with osteoporosis. They have lost their teeth and their appetite for food, maybe for living too. The people who care for them, typically the unmarried youngest daughter, are living saints, like Adele Joaquin, who not only takes care of her mother, who is in her 80s and suffers from vascular dementia, but also looks after the mother of her singer-friend whenever friend goes out of town to make her living.

How to take good care of the elderly who are as helpless as babies but, unlike infants, are burdened by their memories? And who takes care of the carers?

Adele hopes "Bantay Matanda" is the answer, a bridge to provide accurate information and doable instruction to carers, and in that way ensure the best of tender loving care for their elders without burning out too soon. She works out of her home in Quezon City, and as if arranging her life around her mother’s were not by itself tough enough, Adele organizes forums and invites experts in geriatric medicine and Alzheimer’s Disease to cast light on the dimly familiar territory of old age.

Bantay Matanda’s goal is to dispel ignorance and overcome outdated beliefs, the most pernicious of which is the idea that the tantrums, absentmindedness and ennui are "all part of the aging process and nothing can be done about it."

Just for kicks and to see if Adele’s advocacy was for real, I joined a group of 20 whitehaired, gray-haired, blackhaired oldies, "young elderlies" and (I guessed) their nannies at their end-of-the-month special last Saturday. I picked up lots of tips and wished one of my children was there to take down notes for my benefit, for use in the foreseeable future.

(More on Saturday)