Coronavirus Australia: For hugger Hilkka Ovaskainen, her loved ones are so near — yet so far

There are few places where four generations of one family can find themselves together at the ­moment. One such place is an aged-care home.

Hilkka Ovaskainen with son Vesa Eronen, 62, and granddaughter Rebekah Barker, 35, with her children Banjo, 9, Maverick, 4, and Milla, 6. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

There are few places where four generations of one family can find themselves together at the ­moment. One such place is the Finncare aged-care centre in Brisbane’s southeast.

Here, 92-year-old family matriarch Hilkka Ovaskainen looks out through the glass sliding door at her youngest son, Vesa ­Eronen, 62, granddaughter Rebekah Barker, 35, and great-grandchildren Banjo, 9, Milla, 6, and Maverick, 4. They talk and share the latest on the family.

It is bittersweet. Hilkka is a hugger and would love to wrap her arms around the young ones, but can’t. However, just seeing each other in the flesh, laughing and smiling, even through a pane of glass, makes the visit worthwhile for everyone.

As with all families at this time, COVID-19 is never far from the surface. Demographers Bernard Salt and Simon Kuestenmacher say each generation will respond differently to the enormous social and economic impacts of coronavirus in coming decades.

Those pre-boomers older than 75 will have a more abstemious retirement and stay closer to home and the nation’s trusted health system, they say. Baby boomers (born 1946-63) have had retirement plans smashed and may have to work longer. Gen Xers (1964-81) will stoically bear the economic brunt of job change and children staying at home longer.

Millennials (1982-99) may be initially fragile in the face of their first really big economic downturn but are in a good place to prosper from the new business environment. And Gen-Zeds (2000-17) won’t be retreating from the new world of online everything.

For Hilkka, who emigrated from Finland to Australia in 1972 with four of her five boys (the eldest had just married and remained in Helsinki), the days of splashy overseas holidays have passed by. Every month in social isolation is measured differently at 92.

She just wants to spend the time she has remaining with the ones she loves.

“I’ve moved twice in my life because of war (World War II and the Cold War), and this feels like that again,” she tells The Weekend Australian.

“It all feels like such an unknown, things are happening that you have no say over and you have no idea when it will end.”

Baby boomer Vesa, the youngest son, is the only one in Brisbane with his mother. The family initially settled in Canberra when he was 13, and two of his brothers remain there, another dying young in a car accident.

A varied working life followed, including stints as a labourer, landscaper and pastry cook before he headed into retail as a store manager in his 40s. He hasn’t worked for two years since being made redundant from his last job, and hasn’t a great deal in the way of retirement savings, although he has his home sorted.

Asked whether he had concerns about his financial future in the post-COVID era, he puts others ahead of himself, and trusts in his Christian faith. He says he and wife Ulla now have an important role looking after Hilkka and being there for his three daughters and six grandchildren.

“I do have a concern about my kids’ financial future after all this,” he says. “No one yet knows how or when this big bill will be paid, and it may end up being paid by my grandkids.

“But overall, I do have a strong faith that things will work out, that we as a family and even as a country will be stronger.

“We’ve gone through tough times in our life, and my future is to look after Mum and our grandchildren. That is not a burden for us but a reward.”

Rebekah, Vesa’s eldest of three daughters and a research support officer at the Hopkins Centre that specialises in spinal injuries and rehabilitation, laughs when she hears she is a millennial. “My sister is eight years younger than me and I can see that she is a millennial. I’m married with three children,” she says.

The change to everyday life at the moment is so profound it is hard to look over the horizon to a decade or two hence, she admits.

“I’m working from home, my computer is at the dining room table in the middle of all the chaos, my Zoom meetings are interrupted by kids running past. It’s hard to think too far ahead when the day-to-day is hard enough.”

She is feeling OK about her fin­ancial future, given both she and her husband, a carpenter at the Queensland Art Gallery, remain in jobs. They are saving a ­little more than normal because it's hard to spend. And she says that having managed through some previous financial choppy waters, they can put the current crisis in context.

Rebekah admits to some concern that after nearly 30 years of uninterrupted economic growth for the generation above her, hers is going to have to bear the brunt of the recovery with higher income tax.

“I will certainly notice if I am earning the same and bringing less home, because we are at a time in our lives when every dollar counts,” she says.

She says her children, the Gen Zeds, can’t get their heads around what is going on, besides the fact they are stuck indoors.

“My youngest had his fourth birthday party cancelled the other week, and said ‘Where is this ­corona? I can’t see it.’ ”

What about the longer-term changes for them?

“Maybe there will be fewer options for them. If the world does close in, will they be able to just take off and travel the world for three months like we did when we got married? Will they be able to go backpacking? And do all those things we took for granted when we were young?

“But I do stay optimistic. I trust life and I trust the universe and I’m not going to get swept away by negative thoughts about the ­future. Do I think my children’s lives are now stuffed because of all this? I don’t buy it.”