They say that the one who has a faithful full friend has a treasure. For many, including myself, that treasure is grandparents. In addition to serving as honorable substitutes for absent or busy parents, they are usually a constant source of an extra measure of affection, which is a good resource for making the emotions of children and adolescents more stable in these times, when haste and daily urgencies create invisible barriers in not a few homes.

Las Tunas, Cuba - Experts and family mediators, references in upbringing and work, are some of their roles. When we were small they enlarged our horizons teaching us about the human and the divine, about what is more important or things as simple as leaves of different shapes, the many colors of a centipede and even the house of the wolf.

Now, in the midst of the uncertainty that we are living because of the coronavirus, there is an irrefutable fact: the elderly have borne the brunt, contributing to the highest death rate, especially those with chronic conditions. Although there is no evidence that they are more easily infected, experts say that if they do become infected they are at particularly high risk, which they attribute to a weakening of the immune system due to age.

In Cuba, 20 percent of the population is older, and in Las Tunas there are about 11,000. Another harsher reality is that about 15 percent of the elderly Cubans live alone, which has caused alarms to be raised and all kinds of measures and initiatives taken by the government and organizations to protect them.

There are many examples of volunteer messengers, social workers or simply good neighbors, who send them not only food and medicine, but also company and affection, so that fear and loneliness do not take advantage of them in these days of social isolation to which they have been summoned. However, it is urgent for us to generalize these good practices of solidarity in every corner of our Island.

These actions should not be left to spontaneity, they should be organized in each community with the support of mass organizations, in order to provide a favorable environment for each and every one of them. A commitment is required from everyone to their needs, only in this way will we avoid them going out into the streets, exposing themselves in queues, something that unfortunately continues to happen despite the vigilance in this regard.

Another urgency in a society as old as ours is to demand that families take responsibility for guaranteeing the quality of life of our grandparents, since not a few of them play the smart card, as a colleague recently said, and leave to the State everything that they do not want to face from the individual charge as it should by mandate of the blood.

Unfortunately, there are many stories of neglect and abandonment; of old people alone or raising grandchildren, while their children venture into other lands with the promise of old age without shortcomings; or of a woman who has five children, but only one takes care of her because her brothers say that she will inherit the house; there are also many who have lost their homes or have been relegated to the corner of the junk, giving shelter to ungrateful relatives. In short, there is everything in the "vineyard of the Lord."

The truth is that families have the obligation, as dictated by the Constitution of this country, to protect them and offer them a dignified life, security and respect. Even more so now when a pandemic is robbing us of those moments of being close to them and embracing them, limiting the time we have left with them, who are the true pillars of the feelings that sustain our homes.

It is time to look around us and see beyond, not just inside the house, but on the block; to worry about the old man who lives across the street, the one who sells sweets on the corner, the one we know has no family or whose house is in bad condition, the sick one and the one who works with us. It's up to me and you to keep on coloring our world, and no doubt it's better to take care of them now than to have to miss them.