Albanian Folk Tale About Taking Care of Your Parents

Our national pastor who was raised in a mountain village just told this tale to us, as related to him by his grandfather. Once upon a time long, long ago, the Albanians in the mountains villages dealt with their aged fathers by putting their hunching bodies into a large basket and carrying them on their backs to the highest peak in the mountain range to be tied up and abandoned. There the elderly would die, facing wild beasts and starvation. The cruelty of the thing seemed blunted by the fact that this was a custom as ancient as the mountains themselves. Such was the way life, an end to be expected from childhood. One man loaded his dementia-ridden father into his basket and took him to the summit. Drenched with sweat and feeling a lump welling in his throat, the son began to bind his father, who, to his surprise, began to laugh! The son asked, "Why are you laughing? I would think you should be crying." The father replied, "I'm laughing because you are going to join me here in thirty years!" To this reply, the son looked down on the lower peaks, then to Heaven, and back upon his father (who was still laughing). Then the son let out his own belly laugh, put his father back in the basket, and carried him home. And from that day forward, the Albanians have kept their elderly in their own homes, treating them with utmost care and respect to the very end.