A recent report in the New York times says :
' My sister Beth just a few weeks ago fell in her apartment and lay on
the floor for 30 hours before her son came and found her.She had a heart attack during her time on the floor so she could not get up to use the phone to call for help.She was not wearing an alarm button nor did she have a mobile phone in her cardigan pocket.'
Just her bad luck? How many stories like this one?
Old elephants walk into the forest to die alone, perhaps to spare their relatives the witnessing.
Is Beth's story the human version, alone in her apartment, cut off from
relatives and the life outside her door? We know of examples of old
people who die in their houses and lie undiscovered for months or even
years.
The elephant in the room:
The extended family model where the generations live together is foreign to Western Societies, so we have alienation, aloneness, atomised families and the austerity politics that reduce social services.Our societies don't know what to do about these soloists, who choose to play their dirges by themselves.
Sometimes they freeze for lack of heat, or dehydrate and die in heatwaves.
We interfere with the natural process, whereby one of us who can no longer keep up with the
herd is left behind.
Now we cosset such old people in places called 'Assisted Living'.
Perhaps 'assisted dying' would be more relevant.
' My sister Beth just a few weeks ago fell in her apartment and lay on
the floor for 30 hours before her son came and found her.She had a heart attack during her time on the floor so she could not get up to use the phone to call for help.She was not wearing an alarm button nor did she have a mobile phone in her cardigan pocket.'
Just her bad luck? How many stories like this one?
Old elephants walk into the forest to die alone, perhaps to spare their relatives the witnessing.
Is Beth's story the human version, alone in her apartment, cut off from
relatives and the life outside her door? We know of examples of old
people who die in their houses and lie undiscovered for months or even
years.
The elephant in the room:
The extended family model where the generations live together is foreign to Western Societies, so we have alienation, aloneness, atomised families and the austerity politics that reduce social services.Our societies don't know what to do about these soloists, who choose to play their dirges by themselves.
Sometimes they freeze for lack of heat, or dehydrate and die in heatwaves.
We interfere with the natural process, whereby one of us who can no longer keep up with the
herd is left behind.
Now we cosset such old people in places called 'Assisted Living'.
Perhaps 'assisted dying' would be more relevant.
