Waiting to Die

We are just too good at keeping people alive. Our baby boomer generation is now approaching those critical final years as the body systems begin to shut down or wear out. Gradually as the body systems weaken then fail so the support needs increase. As we approach the nineties we become increasingly dependant on support carers to make all those necessary daily living tasks possible, of sleeping, washing, dressing, eating, defecating and waiting for the day to end. Each further intervention requires giving up precious independence and loss of privacy whilst having to accept and rely on the goodwill and timing of others. Medication struggles to offset contradictory systems failures, weak hearts, water retention and a general inability to mobilise. Relieve one symptom at the direct jeopardy to the other. By the time we are well into our nineties, if we are lucky, we are housebound, physically and mentally confined to an ever shrinking world, scarcely able to break out of the containing walls, drained by the effort to manage those few physical task not yet delegated to others. If we are lucky. If not, we may be drifting in an out of mental confusion unable to make sense of what little conscious thought we retain or hooked upto to machines with every function monitored and controlled with no escape routes left open to the mind.

The elderly have no natural place left in our society. For many reasons their families cannot accommodate or give daily support for them. Their views and experiences are old worldly and not only are seen as having no relevance but actually derided for being so out of touch. The best the state can offer is to offer low paid carers from the bottom of the employment market. Even then the rising costs of supporting all these elderly mean that budgets are constantly strained with more limitations placed on what can be provide under which ever meaner circumstances. The medical profession is harassed and time constrained without the tools to ease their elderly patients and lacking time to empathise with their patients deteriorating condition. We as a society, having made some provisions, refuse to recognise the enormous indignity we subject our old to nor have sufficient generous hearts, in recognition for all the sacrifices they made, to allocate time, with costs, to help them enjoy their last years.

So our grand elderly, who have led extraordinary lives with so many rich and varied experiences are left trapped within their weak and feeble bodies and minds, trapped in an ever closing in world. Waiting to die.