The old folks at home

Last night came word that my great aunt, Susie, whom I have written about before here and here, is in the hospital.

Most likely she will have to go in a nursing home, apparently the same one my grandmother, who is her sister, is in.

While that will make for easy visiting for family, it won't be an easy chore getting my great aunt to admit she needs care. But she can hardly see, has diabetes, is very frail. ... she's in her 80s. She needs someone to look after her now, just as she looked after everybody else all of those years ago.

It saddens me considerably to see us trotting these older relatives off to the nursing home, but apparently not to the point that I would stand and argue with my husband about inviting them to live with us. For one thing, I know I am not physically or emotionally capable of dealing with either of them, no matter how much I love them. For another, our house is quite small compared to most of my other relatives. But even so, if I thought it would work I would find space for them.

So I am just as guilty as the rest in this throw-away, ignore them attitude society has towards the elderly. Grow old, grow useless certainly seems to be the motto. But up until Aunt Susie went into the hospital, she was crocheting afghans and giving them to the "old people" in the nursing home. She wasn't useless at all. She was still being productive.

My grandmother, on the other hand, hasn't been productive for 20 years. She gave up on living a productive life in 1985, when her house on Riverside Drive in Salem flooded for a fourth time, and never looked back. She is quite content to be catered to.

I must be somewhere in between these two women. I don't mind a little catering if I am very sick, but most of the time I just want to be left alone to do my work, whatever it might be. And I like to be busy doing something. I am not very good at sitting and watching TV.

The way we treat our elderly today is, I think, a very damning indictment on society. Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me, Christ said somewhere, or so I am remembering. So just look at what we're doing, tossing these wonderful old folks to the wolves. Shame on us. Shame on me.

I don't know what the answer is. Things are different now. It's not like when folks lived on a farm and you could place a pot of green beans in front of the old folks so they could snap up to take up the time and still be productive. We don't have small chores and jobs and things that make people feel useful, we have machines that do all of that. And I think, regardless of what some might think, that people do need to feel useful.

Feeling useless is about the worst feeling in the world.