I was about seven when my great-grandmother Lizzie Buckley died. I have vague, half-memories of her, informed by a certain amount of fear and horror.
Lizzie lived with my gran. Like many old ladies at the time, she had a fox fur and would threaten it would bite me if I did not do as I was told.
When it was time to go, my mother insisted I kiss my great-grandmother goodbye. I never wanted to.
Her hard, toothless mouth was horrible to me. Only mortal fear of her fox fur forced my embrace.
At the end of her life, Lizzie’s bed was brought down to Gran’s front parlour. It made looking after her easier.
I remember some years later Gran saying something about Lizzie being “gaga”.
With the indifference of youth I did not pay much attention to her words. Now, I understand that Lizzie was probably suffering the effects of old age and dementia.
I am telling this story because it seems to me that over the past 50 years there have been fundamental changes in our attitude to old age and/or dementia.
There was never any question but that Lizzie would die in her own bed.
The other thing that strikes me now is that, as a child, I was expected to treat her with the same respect and consideration that I was taught to give any adult.
Her frailty was no excuse to sideline her, or to exclude her from a central role in her family or her involvement with the wider world.
Now, it seems, my childish fear has become the norm in terms of behaviour towards the elderly and those with dementia.
Our youth-obsessed society is less willing to accept, or to be confronted by the reality of the imperfections imposed by maturity.
Careless attitude
This attitude tips our society into carelessness.
We are careless of the gifts older people offer: their humanity, their history, their understanding and their seen-it-all- before wisdom. Increasingly, we want any messy social or health problems tidied up and dealt with.
So we have created retirement villages and built more and more care homes for older people.
But what happens if older people have dementia, too?
That certainly complicates our benign assumption that we have elder care sorted. And further, what if that person is being cared for at home and makes forays into the public domain?
A friend whose husband died recently in a car crash told me people she had known for a long time would cross the road, pretending they had not seen her, to avoid conversation.
Her grief made her different.
My experience, caring for my husband, Tony, has been similar.
Not only is Tony losing his sense of self as his dementia progresses, but there are people who are afraid of his illness, or worried they no longer know how to approach him. They have drifted out of our lives.
As a consequence, Tony, that very sociable being, is also being lost.
Source The Irish Times
