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 ...
Wendy Priesnitz is the Editor of Natural Life Magazine and a journalist with
over 35 years of experience. She has
also authored nine
books.
Visit her
website.
