If McDowell can do guilt, I can too
I swore I'd never write anything as personal as this but after some coaxing from a certain blog award-winner, I relented. Am I the first 'soft' male blogger? Fuck, I hope not.
The Leas Cross documentary last year hit home to those whose parents, grandparents and elderly relatives were sent to live their final few years in a nursing home. Were their loved ones subject to similar abuse? The guilt that comes with having made the decision to put an old person in a home is harsh. The justification for doing so goes round and round in the decision maker's thoughts.
In many cases, those seeking help in caring for an elderly person feel overpowered by the onset of Alzheimers. That Girl's post last week raised some germane issues in relation to the guilt that can be felt in these sort of situations. As Tony Robinson pointed out in his Channel 4 programme tonight, you feel like a piece of shit for not visiting those with Alzheimers, but in my mind it's more so for not wanting to visit.
I'm writing this, not to absolve my own guilt, but to try and get it into words what the motivating factors are for it. Robinson remarkably went on to say that it's okay to feel this way. I personally didn't make the decision to have my grand-aunt admitted to a nursing home. But I do feel guilty for not visiting as often as I could have.
Many times I sat in the car while my parents went inside. Why? Because I couldn't bear to watch her do the demented stare while mumbling the same thing, over and over again. On the few occasions that I did go inside, I barely recognised her. Had somebody wished to play a cruel trick on me, they could easily have pointed me in the direction of some other old cripple bound to a wheelchair and I wouldn't have been any the wiser.
That said, she always was used to sitting on two wheels. The bicycle with the basket in front eventually had to be confiscated when she turned 82. Neighbours would cack themselves with the terror of possibly crashing into an old woman who zig-zagged the road on a cuairt to her friend's house.
To bring the story back to where it started, there were reasons for seeking help for her. As the disease took a firm grip, her mind posed a danger to her able body. All means of starting a fire had to be confiscated and eventually it was necessary to lock her indoors. My parents recognised that this wasn't a reasonable existence for both her and themselves.
In light of all this, I'm hoping some reasonable bus driver will drive into this unsuspecting 70 year old. Or else hopefully someone will have taken the finger out to come up with a cure by then.
Published by Colm.
The Leas Cross documentary last year hit home to those whose parents, grandparents and elderly relatives were sent to live their final few years in a nursing home. Were their loved ones subject to similar abuse? The guilt that comes with having made the decision to put an old person in a home is harsh. The justification for doing so goes round and round in the decision maker's thoughts.
In many cases, those seeking help in caring for an elderly person feel overpowered by the onset of Alzheimers. That Girl's post last week raised some germane issues in relation to the guilt that can be felt in these sort of situations. As Tony Robinson pointed out in his Channel 4 programme tonight, you feel like a piece of shit for not visiting those with Alzheimers, but in my mind it's more so for not wanting to visit.
I'm writing this, not to absolve my own guilt, but to try and get it into words what the motivating factors are for it. Robinson remarkably went on to say that it's okay to feel this way. I personally didn't make the decision to have my grand-aunt admitted to a nursing home. But I do feel guilty for not visiting as often as I could have.
Many times I sat in the car while my parents went inside. Why? Because I couldn't bear to watch her do the demented stare while mumbling the same thing, over and over again. On the few occasions that I did go inside, I barely recognised her. Had somebody wished to play a cruel trick on me, they could easily have pointed me in the direction of some other old cripple bound to a wheelchair and I wouldn't have been any the wiser.
That said, she always was used to sitting on two wheels. The bicycle with the basket in front eventually had to be confiscated when she turned 82. Neighbours would cack themselves with the terror of possibly crashing into an old woman who zig-zagged the road on a cuairt to her friend's house.
To bring the story back to where it started, there were reasons for seeking help for her. As the disease took a firm grip, her mind posed a danger to her able body. All means of starting a fire had to be confiscated and eventually it was necessary to lock her indoors. My parents recognised that this wasn't a reasonable existence for both her and themselves.
In light of all this, I'm hoping some reasonable bus driver will drive into this unsuspecting 70 year old. Or else hopefully someone will have taken the finger out to come up with a cure by then.
Published by Colm.
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