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Friday, December 30, 2005

The holiday season is a time for increased visitation at the nursing homes that house our elderly. The homes are full of children, the walls are full of Christmas cards and the faces are full of smiles. The residents sit around in their wheelchairs proudly trading stories of time spent with their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The halls are decorated with symbols of the season and the rooms themselves are decorated with care by family member’s or the old people themselves in an attempt to capture just a tiny piece of the holiday spirit. For these people, the possibility of this being their last Christmas is far too real. Next year, it may be for them whom we sing Auld Lang Syne.

Amid all the hustle and bustle of people remembering Grandma on Christmastime, there is an occasional resident who hasn’t so much as a Christmas card on the wall much less a wreathe on their door. No visitors for them...they just get to watch.

How will the historians of the future describe what it is that we do with our elderly? Will they say that we cared for them with the love and care due the people who loved and cared for us? Or will they say that we shipped them off en masse to be cared for by strangers who were paid minimum wage?

Did we accord them the dignity with which they conducted their lives? Did we remember that it was these people who built our world and then, entrusted it to us when the time came? A man who survived the Bataan Death March once told me that the Philippines were nothing compared to life in a nursing home. He meant it. During WWII, he had the hope of a young man...in the nursing home, there was no such hope. For most of these folks, death is most assuredly the only way out....even if that person is a real life hero and a true national treasure.

For those lucky few who have a loving and attentive family, there is more life to be lived. They still have their place in this world. But when family goes away and fails to return, there is nothing left behind but the ghost of a life that is no more. The eyes of these ghosts are empty in a way that surpasses sadness. Sadness would imply the existence of some emotion and for these ghosts, emotion is long gone. The loneliness has turned them inward to a place that can no longer be reached by another human.

Life slips away so insidiously that we actually celebrate the milestones that necessarily mean that we are indeed, slowly losing the things that define us. After we marry off our children and collect our gold watches, all that is left is our “stuff” and our family. All of the “stuff’ in the world is meaningless, especially if our home is a tiny room in a nursing home. Without family and friends, these rooms are little more than death chambers.

There’s a man who resides in a local nursing home who is a ward of the state. Earlier this year, he had no shoes and his case worker was apparently far too overworked to find the time to bring shoes to this man who had no one else in the world who cared whether or not his feet had shoes on them. Call after call to the county failed to produce a pair of shoes. Eventually a kind worker brought in a pair of shoes that her husband no longer wore. America should be able to do better for these people.

With the baby boomers just beginning to hit the nursing homes, those of us who are still able to make a difference had better get the job done because we’re next. Like it or not, we are the next generation to inhabit the old folks homes. Chances are, if you had to move to one tomorrow, you wouldn’t like it. You wouldn’t like the taste of the food, the institutional schedule or the starkness of your room. You wouldn’t like the diapers that they slap on each and every new resident. They know something that you don’t...if you live in a nursing home and you’re dependent upon assistance to get to the bathroom, you probably won’t get that assistance in time.

If you find a nursing home worker that does care, you can be sure that they are overworked and underpaid. Corporate offices are concerned with profits and administrators with state regulations. There’s little more than kindness and decency to motivate these workers. Kindness and decency are a bit more apparent at this time of year than most others...but for the ghosts who sit alone...they’re little more than a distant memory.

In case you haven’t yet come up with a New Year’s resolution, here’s an idea. Vow to make a friend of a nursing home resident. That is truly a gift that will keep on giving, especially if you bring your children along.

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