Nursing Home Residents with Purpose
I was walking home from my writer’s group the other day, talking with a group member who’s a former emergency medical technician.
“It’s funny how the elderly get infantilized so much. I wonder why that is,” she commented.
“I think we do it to them. I didn’t realize it for a few years into working in nursing homes, but if you think about it, they don’t have to make their beds, they don’t have to cook meals, or go grocery shopping, or worry about paying their rent, or cleaning their homes. What do we leave them with? Nothing.”
“So, you think we should let them be more involved in those things?”
“No. I think they should be writing their congresspeople, knitting blankets for impoverished babies, raising money for breast cancer research, and even participating in the reelection of right-wing Republican candidates if that’s what they want to do, as long as someone else is doing the laundry.”