The original natural family living magazine, founded in 1976. Reader-supported
and trusted by thinking people around the world who want positive alternatives
to high cost, high consumption lifestyles for themselves and their families.
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
from Natural Life Magazine Sept/Oct 2005 My mother used to take care of me. Now the tables have turned and the child is parenting the parent. Watching a parent succumb to end-of-life issues can be painful. It can also be overwhelming, especially for those of us who have spent our adult lives espousing values around community, non-violence, de-institutionalization, and so on. In fact, the prospect of moving my 96-year-old mother into a long-term care home has made me question many aspects of both my values and the way our society treats its elders. A long-term care home can be the ultimate in assembly line living, relegating a person to a thing in storage, which we hope wouldn’t need too much attention until it’s time to bury the body. Isn’t it ironic that as we are living longer, we are often forced to surrender freedom and control in order to get the support and services we need. Society views aging as a process of diminishment, so elders enter a new phase of living in a world that is often uninterested in them as individuals and unreceptive to their unique gifts and needs. News outlets regularly document case of elder abuse and seemingly callous, under-funded, over-corporatized care models. Women and the poor seem to be the main victims of our elder care system, which separates the generations from each other and results in loss of control, loss of choice and isolation. The average nursing home is based upon a medical model, where residents are seen as ill and dependent, where professional staff members provide treatment and where daily life revolves around administrative needs rather than those of the residents. In effect, residents become known by their diagnoses and elderly foibles, rather than their unique personalities, and are offered a half-hearted menu of structured activities. One nursing home aide has called these facilities outmoded zoos. Thomas Edward Gass felt drawn to serve the elderly after caring for his mother at the end of her life. And he wrote a book about the experience called ... To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's digital edition. Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with over 30 years of experience. She has also authored nine books. Visit her website. |
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
