The love ( and duty) that’s the hallmark of a civilised society
As more of us care for elderly parents at home, an uplifting testament to ...
One night in 2004, when my 84-year-old mother Jena was staying with me, I handed her a handful of almonds and some hot milk on a tray. How we both laughed.
You see, this is what she used to make me eat and drink every morning during exam weeks when I was at school.
Asians believe almonds stimulate the brain, help to retain information. She took the tray and said, gently: ‘So you think I am a child now? Maybe true. Can’t do so much for myself, brain not working so good.’
In fact, she was alert and very smart. She taught herself english after we came to Britain in the Seventies, having fled the terror of Idi Amin’s Uganda, and still devoured the newspapers and watched news and current affairs programmes. But her heart was weak, and she suffered from multiple ailments and complex health problems.
In the last year of her life, she made me promise two things: not to put her into a care home, and to make sure she didn’t die alone. I am proud to say that I kept both.
Yesterday, the Mail revealed that families all over Britain are shunning care homes and are instead looking after their elderly relatives themselves.
The Office for national Statistics (OnS) says there are one million more pensioners than in 2001, yet the number in care homes increased by only 1,000. This shows more and more are being looked after in their communities as opposed to institutions — a trend that can only be good news.
How much nicer and more dignified it is for the elderly to be looked after by their loved ones for as long as is humanly possible. How much more compassionate and socially responsible than parking them out of sight and mind in care homes, which can be prohibitively expensive — and, in some cases, can mete out uncaring treatment to their defenceless residents.
Despite being infirm, my mother was single- minded and wanted to live independently, even in her late 80s and 90s. She had been with us for eight years, but I helped her get a housing association flat and later helped move her into sheltered accommodation near my house.
This meant I could take her to the doctors, to hospital, to mosque every Friday, to see her friends, to parks and the cinema.
A couple of times a week, I’d pop in to cook her favourite dishes, and arranged to have a lady cook and deliver food on other days. When we felt she could no longer cope, even in the sheltered housing, we built a granny flat on the side of our home. Sadly, she never moved in, because her health had deteriorated and it was never ready in time.
DUrIng the last two years of her life, I arranged for carers to bathe and clothe her when I could not do it myself — for there is no doubt that caring for your own mother or father is not always easy.
Sometimes, I felt irritated or angry that all this responsibility had fallen upon me: my brother had moved to South Africa and my sister is mentally ill. But looking back, though I miss her every day, I take comfort in the fact I was dutiful and she thought I was a good daughter.
The infirmities of old age afflict the rich and poor, educated and uneducated, strong and weak. Our biggest challenge is how to ensure the old are treated well and with dignity, have company and feel joy, before they pass on.
These OnS figures suggest, at least, that more and more families are doing their best to give them that.
But there may be unsavoury explanations for the trend. The appalling expense of care homes (costs have risen 50 per cent in a decade and £1,000 a week for basic care is commonplace) must deter families from putting granny or grandpa into care.
Then there is the litany of horror stories and exposés — too upsetting for words — of appalling treatment the elderly have suffered. earlier this year, BBC radio Five Live discovered there had been 15,000 complaints of abuse and neglect of elderly people in care homes in the year to 2014 — a third of them were upheld.
We have heard of grannies begging for food or water, old people being beaten by carers or ignored when they cried for help; of premises closing at short notice, turning residents out with little idea of where they were going next.
Last year, two Surrey homes were closed by industry regulator the Care Quality Commission — one so quickly that residents waited to be moved for hours in their pyjamas on one of the coldest nights of the year.
These stories scare old people and their families. They did my mum and her friends, three of whom did end up in care homes and died too soon afterwards. One was soaked in urine when doctors declared her dead.
So yes, of course it is a good thing for society and families that the elderly can live with their relatives. But looking after them is challenging, and I feel so strongly that the government should be helping people who do so — both financially and with expert advice.
Some of these people are desperate. I know, because, last year, I was involved in an exercise initiated by MPs, businesswomen and other professionals that looked into the difficulties they face. Around the country, I talked to middle-aged women looking after their parents as well as their children — the socalled sandwich generation.
These women felt that same sense of duty I did with my mum — though unlike me, several had parents with dementia or serious disabilities. Though it was incredibly difficult, most of them remained upbeat. I so admired them, these unsung heroes.
When I met one, Helen, in Salford, her 80-year-old mother, Martha, had had a fall and was in hospital. Until then, Martha had lived on her own for 20 years in a rented ground-floor flat. That was no longer possible.
Helen, a lone mum, had remortgaged her house to build an extension, so Martha could move in. She gave up her teaching job in a secondary school and started hometutoring classes. Helen was 65 and suffered from asthma.
BUT Martha was terrified of the idea of care homes, so her daughter had stepped in: ‘She is my mum, my blood,’ Helen told me. ‘My parents were the best in the world. Dad died too young. Am I going to just take and not give back? I have to say, though, that my daughter’s generation have no such sense of duty.’
In some senses, she’s right. The sad truth is that, today, even in Asian communities — which have long believed ailing parents should live at home — this tradition of caring for your elderly relatives is being undermined. now, old people are too often seen as a nuisance and a burden by too many young Asians.
I sometimes visit London’s Southall Park, where dozens of old Asian men and women can be found. Some have been put into care homes where they are left to fester; others are ignored or resented in the family home. The lucky few are well loved and looked after by their children.
I often hear the complaint from Asians that neglectful offspring have become too ‘english’, by which they mean they no longer have the deeply-held Asian belief in the importance of the family.
But I tell them that all around this country — in english as well as Scots, Welsh and Irish families — there are people taking care of their elderly relatives and, often, making great sacrifices.
As a nation, we should be proud of, and grateful to, those who give up so much and devote themselves to elderly mums and dads. The state should make sure these carers get adequate financial support, so they don’t feel exploited or undervalued.
They save taxpayers millions of pounds, and must be encouraged by every means possible.
I am so glad I kept my promises to my mum — to provide companionship to the end, and not put her in a care home. It was payback time: after all, she looked after me from the very moment I was born.
That reciprocity between parents and children is the hallmark of a civilised society. For as I realised when my mother laughed about those almonds and hot milk — the day she said she was the child now, and I was the carer — it completes the circle of life.