There’s a study out of UCSF that found elderly people who reported feeling lonely had a 23% higher risk of death within six years compared to those who didn’t. Another study, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, found that social isolation is as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
I read those numbers and felt them in my chest. Not as a researcher. As a guy who films elderly people for a living and then watches their families wish they’d started sooner.
Here’s what I see over and over. A family calls me. They want to film Mom or Dad or both. I ask what prompted the call. About half the time, it’s a health scare. A diagnosis. A fall. Something that cracked the illusion that there’s always more time.
The other half call because someone already died and they’re desperate to capture whoever’s left before the same thing happens again. Those calls are harder. Not because the work is different but because the urgency in their voice is different. There’s grief mixed with regret, and regret is the one I can’t fix with a camera.
I don’t bring this up to make anyone feel bad. I bring it up because the science is clear and it matches everything I’ve witnessed firsthand: your presence in your parents’ lives isn’t just nice. It’s medicine. It is literally keeping them alive longer.
And I get it. Life is busy. You’ve got kids, a job, a mortgage, your own stress. Your parents are “fine.” They tell you they’re fine. They don’t want to be a burden. So you call on Sunday, maybe, and you mean to visit but the weekends fill up and before you know it three months have gone by.
I’ve filmed people in their 80s and 90s who live alone. The loneliest ones aren’t the ones without friends. They’re the ones whose kids are busy. They understand. They’d never say it out loud. But when I ask them “what do you wish you had more of?” the answer is almost always the same. Time with their children.
So here’s my pitch, and it has nothing to do with Heritage Films. Call your parents. Not next week. Today. Go see them this month. Sit in their kitchen and let them talk. Not about logistics or schedules or doctor appointments. Just talk. About their life. About your life. About nothing.
That visit might add years to their life. I’m not being dramatic. The research says exactly that.
And if you want to capture those conversations, the stories and the voices, so your own children can know their grandparents long after they’re gone, Heritage Films can help. But step one is just showing up.