Have You Ever Looked In the Eyes of the Elderly
Posted: Sunday, October 16, 2011
by Melodi Leonhardt
have you ever looked in the eyes of an elderly patient at a nursing facility?
what do you see ? an old person who is dependent? a baby in an old body?
do you see the mom? the sister? brother? father? grandma or grandpa? someones first love? someones child?
as someone who has worked in the healthcare facility for over 30 years i see alot in those eyes.
Japan celebrates their people when they turn 60, in our civilized (?) modern country we tell them to retire, replace them with younger people ( who know less and we can pay them less) treat them as children and place them in facilities where younger strangers become basically their masters. We no longer respect them or care about them, they have served their purpose in American society.
These people are someones loved one, right there they are important. they took care of families, held jobs or volunteered. They had personalities given just to them. They meant something to someone. Do you ever take time to ask them what matters to them? What they did for a living? What hobbies they enjoyed? How many kids they had? brothers? sisters? As they get older we de-personalize them, now they are just a burden on society, or so it seems.
i rememeber a lady I cared for, I will never forget her. She shared with me about her first love and how he proposed. He took her out to the woods and met her on a white horse and got down on one knee and proposed. The way her face lit up when she told me made my heart smile. She was 100 and told me of the things she had seen and experienced in that 100 years, wow , what a wealth of experience and information was inside her. Can you imagine 100 years of changes and things experience in one life? Then boom shes in a facility and no one sees anything but an old woman who needs help getting up and showering and eating!!
I took care of an architect who had to have her bed made a certain way, and I mean perfectly, everything on that bed had to folded at a certain point or she would get so upset, no one wanted to care for her, but that was part of who she was, what is there to get upset about?
Then there are the ones who have been emotionally damaged from circumstances out of their control. Abused, molested, emotionally abused, causing them to be locked up because they had to adjust and then they do not act " normal" according to society? who determines what "normal" is? why do they victims get locked up while the victimizers run free?
The way we treat older people or disturbed people is no less prejudice then how we treat people of another color. We know no matter the year , prejudice remains strong to roar its ugly head. just saying!!!
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Thank you for a nice heart and article.thank you and you are welcome
Ms. Leonhardt, may I say that your article (This article) is superbly balanced and cuts deep a lot of Home Truths. If I may say, the one thing that I would have added to this fantastic warm hearted piece, is that someday we will all be accredited to any of the example of persons in this story. This is not a time I wish to encourage to come around any quicker, because what you have said is absolutely true - The younger people (Under 60-70) forget about the elders.
Thank you for sharing this.
Marcus De Stormthank you so much for the nice comment, such a compliment from you
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