Old age not for sissies, but don’t box oldies in
I’d like to take those glossy old folks’ home brochures, which you now find in your letterbox, or your newspaper, and insert them vigorously into the nostrils of the advertisers.
Surely nobody looks at the pastel-toned interiors of these waiting-for-god depots and longs to rush there to sing madrigals and play Chinese Checkers.
Where is it written that older people must lose their personality and preferences, and accept a life of blandness in preparation for their trip to the sky, and how has it happened that ‘‘rest homes’’ have taken over from family as inheritors of old people’s wealth?
It is these very ‘‘rest homes’’ that make you dread getting too decrepit to live in your real home any more, yet the demand is apparently great, and the money made by shareholders gratifying. Ryman Healthcare’s shares have reportedly shot up 4000 per cent in the past 20 years, while its competitors are also buying up land and building little units at a great rate.
Your world shrinks as the infirmities of age start to bite, and shrinks further when you enter the institution you’ll leave in a box, so surely it ought to be the option of last resort.
Naturally, then, I read of the suicide of Annemarie Treadwell, and her explanation for it, and was sympathetic. Treadwell sought help from retired teacher Susan Austen, found not guilty last week of aiding her suicide.
Austen was recorded at a meeting of assisted dying group Exit as saying she had imported one package of pentobarbitone with a fascinator headpiece from Hong Kong. It seems importing lethal drugs is as complicated and ingenious as importing recreational drugs, though solely with having the means for death in mind.
The euthanasia cult, at least in this case, seems dominated by anxious women, possibly because men die first, and to her supporters Austen is a hero. But not to me. If we’re going to have voluntary euthanasia, we’ll have to do better than cloak-and-dagger escapades where the suicidal person’s best interests – the case for living – are set aside.
Treadwell left a letter so depressing you could not fail to be moved by it. Aged 77, she was on a regime of painkillers for arthritis that had attacked her hands, her feet, and maybe her hips. She had short-term memory loss, kept losing her keys, and forgot appointments, names and faces. Intelligent and universityeducated, she lacked the will to follow her interests. She felt boring and stupid, and missed the loving touch and sensual possibilities of a partner.
She had entered the home at 70, when she could still manage the shift herself, finding small rooms with a [display] unit for residents’ mementoes of ‘‘who they were,’’ or maybe used to be.
‘‘One could say they [old people] are being ‘warehoused’, Treadwell wrote, with mordant accuracy, leaving them unable to choose when to die while living without joy or hope. Her world, she said, was comfortless.
But this is not enough to know about her. Treadwell’s doctor gave evidence she was coping well, though suffering from depression, for which she was medicated – but how open was she about her physical problems? Had she ever been referred to a specialist? Might she have benefited from surgery or physiotherapy?
What was her expectation of old age? Might she have been better off staying in her own home? Did she discuss her decision to move to a rest home thoroughly with anybody, or explore it thoroughly for herself?
Most older people I know, like me, forget names, lose their keys, and fairly often can’t find things they know they put somewhere. They have aches and pains and don’t enjoy them, don’t have their youthful libido, and may not feel confident climbing up ladders anymore, but they don’t want to die.
They are in their own homes, full of the clutter of life, and only occasionally think about their children having to deal with it all one day. They have pets, grow plants, listen to music, knit, embroider, make things, read books, sometimes hunt for their glasses when they’re already wearing them.
Old age is not for sissies. While the sight of a small flock of waxeyes feeding among flowers still makes us smile we are in and of the world, and our lives are precious. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.