Why have aged parents lost their meaning?
Elders looked after us, so go the extra mile
ISTILL have hundreds of notebooks dating back to the first interview I conducted for a story almost 40 years ago.
I have not gone back to them in the last 20 years since I stopped practising my craft as a journalist.
My wife has a set of hot hair curlers that I bought her as a gift 30 years ago.
She has not used them more than twice in all that time – and the vintage grooming aid looks sad and forlorn as it collects dust.
Atop a bookshelf in my daughter’s bedroom, her first pair of tiny white shoes takes pride of place.
We have cupboards suffocating with old blankets, musty gudhras (home-made duvets), piles of crocheted doilies, three-piece suits five sizes too small, bulging boxes of yellowing greeting cards, battered cooking pots and pans, chipped plates and mugs, long playing records and hundreds of cassette tapes.
None of the above are put into meaningful use anymore other than to evoke fond memories of a bygone era during annual hay fever inducing spring cleaning sessions.
But we nonetheless cling to them as if they are a living part of the family.
As if a curse will befall us if we donated them to charity.
I got thinking about our misplaced priorities in terms of what we should hold on to and what we should let go when I was recently confronted by the searing pain, anger, emotional torture, cruelty, mercilessness and heartlessness that attends cases of old people being dumped, yes dumped, in old age homes.
Like household garbage that is confined to the municipal rubbish dump, ageing folk are being discarded at frail care centres with scant regard for their innermost feelings.
One elderly gentleman has a clean shave, dresses up in a smart suit and makes sure his shoes are shining every Saturday morning as he waits for his son to fetch him from a Durban old age home.
Months of Saturdays have gone by and the promised visit by the son to take his father home for the weekend to spend time with the grandchildren has not materialised.
Unfazed, the graceful old man pursues his weekly ritual with gleeful anticipation, trusting his son will not let him down.
After all, he had dutifully fathered him into adulthood.
A gentle, kind-natured woman known to me was packed off to a nursing home without as much as a family discussion or prior warning.
She had been discarded by her own moneyed blood relatives because she had outlived her usefulness as housekeeper, cook and childminder.
She asked questions for which nobody could give her answers; she cried until she had no more tears.
She missed her own room with her clothes and toiletries; she ached for familiar faces; she yearned for her own television set to watch her favourite movies; and she craved the smells, sounds and sights of accustomed surroundings.
Being bathed and fed by caregivers, who can never match the empathy and patience of family members soon took its toll. She began wasting away. She had no one to talk to. All she did was lie on her back on a standard mattress, 24/7.
Within a few months she was a shadow of her former self.
A lifetime of being a loving mother, grandmother, aunt, teacher and cooking connoisseur was snuffed out in an old age home among strangers and where the caregivers fetched and carried, not out of love, but with an eye on the month-end pay packet – and whatever they could pilfer from goodies brought by the occasional visitors.
The old woman clung to life in the mistaken belief that the old age home was a disturbing nightmare and she would soon wake up in her own room.
On Freedom Day, her soul found freedom from the confines of a cold, single bed – she passed away without any family member at her bedside.
Those who went to the mortuary to dress her for the last time were horrified by the her body covered in saucer-sized bedsores. What anguish she must have silently endured. It was not in her nature to complain. Why such punishment inflicted on a woman who never hurt a fly and who cherished her soft skin, still baffles me?
Pressure sores are caused by negligent staff.
Facilities must design and implement care, so that patients can be assessed for their risk of developing bed sores and a comprehensive plan can be created to prevent their development.
But do those who manage old age homes care?
Do the children of patients care?
Why have aged parents lost their meaning and weight in the lives of children?
The answer is that perhaps they are keeping too much in step with the modern idolatry of the nuclear family.
Young couples want to live separately from their older parents. They do not see older folk as part of a family unit within which they want to thrive. Not too long ago, the extended family system was the bedrock of the Indian community.
Several nuclear families would share a common roof as a joint family system.
Within a single household would be elderly parents and two or three adult married sons with their spouses and children.
The elderly were not viewed as a “burden” but as a fundamental part of the family, to be respected and cared for.
The practice of according old people a special place within the family unit caused Indians to sneer at the Western practice of dumping old people in homes.
Changing economic patterns and increased assimilation of Western culture have caused the crumbling of traditional values, and the extended family as an institution.
Married children suddenly crave what they call “independence” and “space”; they lead busy lives in small apartments too cramped for both children and parents, never mind that many of them earn in a month what their parents slogged for during a whole year.
Dumping old people in homes seems the right thing to do, leaving couples free to pursue their careers, party around or go for vacations without the nagging thought of aged parents at home.
Grown-up children regard looking after parents and parents-in-law as a cost and a liability and the popular option is to send the parents to an oldage home, where they remain for the rest of their days, waiting to die. Usually, the more well-todo the family is, the more often this option is taken because frail care centres do not come cheap.
A plethora of reasons are given: everyone is working and there’s no one to take care of the old folk; the house is too small, the children are growing up and there are not enough rooms; or the old people require specialised care that we are not trained to give.
But all defences fall flat when we realise that the same old parents we are talking about as obstacles are the very people who took care of us whenever we fell sick and who sacrificed outings, friends and vacations only to make us feel happy and wanted.
Those who dump their parents in homes ought to realise that they will eventually meet the same fate.
Caring for ageing parents can be complicated and challenging.
I give full credit to children who go the extra mile, adapt bathrooms and stairs and pay for caregivers, only to keep their parents where they belong –at home.
It is my prayer that I, personally, will always be able to take care of myself and when the time comes to get off the planet, it will be a swift and sweet transition. Yogin Devan is a media
consultant and social commentator. Share your comments with him on: yogind@meropa.co.za