Dear editor,
My father pleaded that I not put him in a “home for old people.”
It is common for people to say, "When I get to that stage, I’ll take a bottle of Scotch and some pills."
While some people have creative and satisfying 80s and 90s, the spectre is so often incapacity, perhaps confusion — the sense of no longer being the person one was.
As a society it is important to tease out the difficulty we seem to have with the change from competence to incapacity — as it is this mixture of fear and denial that prevents us from designing care that meets our needs as we age.
I recently saw a film in which an African rock star paid a visit to his family, which lived in poverty. His grandmother was reclining inside a tent-like structure. He specifically went to see her, and she prayed that he would have a long life like she had been given.
No fancy care in place, just a place to rest with her family. No talk of ‘the little white pill’ — just a prayer that her grandson would have a long life.
This is somewhat incomprehensible to us as North Americans. We equate a long life that is worth living with a life of achievement, a life of continuing capacity and production.
It is time for us to get away from the production model. As human beings, to thrive, we need to be loved and accepted, to have a place.
In our middle years we are productive and we are able in this period to care for the young and the elderly. Babies are not productive, but we don’t look at diapers, like we do at Depends.
If we accept that we will likely, as we age, become less capable of “doing,” we will start to delineate what we will need in that stage of our life.
Certainly physical care — but more importantly emotional care — to be loved and accepted for who we are, not what we do.
In the '80s the process of deinstitutionalization saw our adults with developmental disabilities (another group that needs care) more integrated into our communities. Our society had recognized that the large institutional model was not kind.
Perhaps, as we face our own fears and areas of denial and look at the care we would want and need, we will start to create care models that address those desires and needs. Maybe the large-scale residential care model works for some individuals, maybe a type of small “group home” model would work for others, maybe even a home share model might be the best way to meet needs of some elderly people who need care.
Jennifer Pass,
Courtenay
Editor's note: Jennifer Pass is a retired lawyer and the chair of Support our Seniors (SOS) Comox Valley. The opinions expressed herein are of the author and not necessarily of SOS.