"Your walking becomes ambulation..."

I'm reading "Gray Areas: ethnographic encounters with nursing home culture." The book is a collection of articles written by various experts, and edited by Philip B. Stafford.
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Just getting through the introduction of this book is difficult. Immediately, I think of all the people I've met over the years living and working in the long-term care system, and for the most part good and caring people. Yet they along with the elderly they care for, must endure a system that is neither good nor caring. In fact, the system is notorious for transforming good people with passion into disallusioned workers who leave the profession. Burnout is common among the staff. Turnover rates can reach 300%, even among management the turnover rate can reach 80%. The front door to the nursing home is a revolving door. One third of the 17,000 facilities in the U.S. have been cited for abuse, neglect, and other actions that led to the premature death of the people under their "care."
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If that isn't enough, fraudent claims for services that never happened or are exaggerated, cost the taxpayer somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 billion every year. That's a lot of money. Lawsuits are common, that is family members suing for negligence or wrongful death. In fact, one large nursing home chain, owning some 1,500 facilities, had so many lawsuits against them they had to change the name of the chain just to insulate themselves against all the bad publicity. And that's another trend, it's becoming increasingly difficult to know who even owns the facilities.
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But for me, the worst of all of these crimes is that the older person, who has managed to survive into old age, is not respected nor revered, instead they are robbed of their personhood. The title of this blog comes from Gray Areas, the Introduction on page 12. In it, Stafford writes:
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"When you enter the nursing home as a patient, you experience a loss of self, of personhood. Your walking becomes "ambulation." Your food becomes your "diet." Your eccentricities become your "behaviors."

Your life becomes your "record."

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Of all the aspects of this system, that one can critque, I believe this is the worst of them all. Why? Because, many of the people living in nursing homes are survivors, great people who have endured life's trials. They perservered. They didn't quit. They worked hard all their life, getting educated, marrying, having and raising children, making major contributions to our society, only to move into the final stage of their life to be reduced to something less than human, to be stripped of their identity and forced into a "purgatory," suspended between the living and the dying. Is it any wonder that many of them will say to me, "I wish I would just die."

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Growing old in America, can mean having to learn how to live in this world of "suspended animation." Our ageism, deeply embedded in every corner of our culture, perpetuates this system. Ageism is in our workplace, in our entertainment, in our families, and even in our worship. As a society, we are blind to it. Like other forms of prejudice, our blindness results in the wrongful death of many valuable people, and in this case, the premature death, of literally thousands of older people living in nursing homes.

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So what can or should we do? The first step is simply to admit that we are blind. Then we need to begin the task of finding ways to correct our vision, our thinking. I believe one of the best places to start is in our faith communities. Does your programming reflect ageism? Is your community segregated by age? Do segregated groups ever mix? Does your programming promote intergenerational contact? Exposure to one another is the most powerful way to break down false stereotypes, untrue myths, and provide the catalyst for change.

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If we don't address this bastion of "hate crimes," and that is exactly what they are, wrongful acts based in the hatred of our elderly, then the ground will remain drenched with the blood older people. I think we can do better.

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I quote Isaiah 1:17 often:

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"Learn to do well, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, defend the fatherless and plead for the widow."

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Let me encourage you this week to carefully read, and meditate on Isaiah 1:11-29.