May 28, 2004

This is being typed in my postage-stamp size condo in Sun City, Arizona, one of many "retirement communities" in America where the television commercials depict the few, not the many and the connected, not the discarded. One of the chief causes of death among older Americans now is some complication of loneliness that leads to the misuse or overuse of antidepressants, tranquilizers or alcohol.

Why? Because when I was a child, a teen and then a young adult, we all wound up at granny's for visits, and granny was the focus of the family until she went to a home at age 89. Every one of her five children looked at granny as both their mother and the obligation of the family was to care for her. Even when grandpa was alive, he was an obligation (but not the center of attention, he simply got to ranting about politics and everyone faded into the next room). For the generation in which I grew up, grandparents and parents took upon themselves the obligation of raising children, and grown children in return took the obligation of caring for their aging parents and grandparents, if possible. We had no "me, my, I" generation then as a social code.

Mine was surely not any role model for families, there was far too much sibling rivalry, ill tempers and strife, but granny was not the cause of any of it. Her children simply took after their father, some of which might have been genetic but most was just the example he set of bullying his way around. But in his own way he was a man who believed in the right things, such as character, morality and the bond of marriage. Divorce was simply an idea that never occurred to my grandparents in spite of hard times and illness.

Now there is a generation of adult children who are too busy being married, unmarried, career-driven and isolated from the family (which is more now of a common name than a common bond) to bother caring for aging parents or even grandparents. Institutionalization is more a place for the discarded than for the disabled beyond home care. Granny's children, four daughters and a son, all married and not one escaped the disaster of divorce. My mother fought getting a divorce on grounds of "mental cruelty" (a catchall for easy divorce on the road to no-fault and packaged divorce kits) because she believed once married, people should stay married. Even through the differences, the arguments, the frustrations and the stupidity common to human nature, she felt a marriage should stay together. Maybe granny got that and one other idea across to my mom, which was "always take care of your health, because without health you have nothing."

After the final decree of divorce was received from the court, my mother wore her engagement and wedding rings until arthritis in her hands forced her to remove them, she never dated and never considered herself divorced. She always had to think twice when asked directly or filling out a form which to put: "married" or "divorced." The law said one thing, her emotions said another. I wonder how many people feel that way today? Do they just walk out and go their way, shutting the door on broken vows and whatever time two people were bound together as one flesh? It seems this is the goal of the twenty-first century, other than to make marriage utterly meaningless by "marrying" two of the same sex against the laws of nature.

Children and the elderly are suffering from the disregard of the young and mature adults in the family. In an age of warehouses full of "how to" books on relationships and counselors that weren't around when my grandparents and my parents were married, the sanctity of marriage has been disregarded and it is just a paperwork thing followed by a party.

Now we have produced a generation of lonely, aging people, whether parents or not. It takes some getting used to and the television has been the highway of escape for those who must live alone. In retirement communities, the married fare much better than the widowed or single. Both males and females discover this shortly after they move in to a retirement community (not a care center, not a nursing home, we're talking about walled-city life for those over 55 and apartments, condominiums and houses). Cocooning becomes the order of the day. I've knocked on several widow's doors to say hello. Only one seems to come visit, generally to check on me if I haven't been seen outside for a couple of days.

To escape the vegetating act of watching repulsive television I created a virtual "job" for myself, being the writer I wanted to become fifty years ago when I was at UCLA. This isn't the Washington press corps job I longed for, but it's better than not writing. The catch is, internet writers are unpaid except for personal satisfaction and the freedom to write what they want.

At the market the other day I commented to the cashier, a girl who appeared to be all of 19 or 20, that it's difficult to buy for one person. She commented "I could never get used to living alone." Two of my lady friends had the same problem. Both were widows who felt they could not make it alone. Fear, the kind of nameless fear of something they cannot describe, led them both to remarry and each made a mistake. One got a divorce, the other has hung in there in spite of her misery. Now the one who is divorced is panicky about being alone.

Perhaps this goes right through the ear-tunnels of younger people, but the days pass quickly. It was just yesterday that I was young and had my parents, grandparents, aunts and an uncle -- that's the way it feels. Oh they're all here, just in the cemetery. While younger people seem to have little problem finding friends, older people do not "connect" easily, they cocoon alone in their apartments and condos, perhaps a few will meet at a restaurant once a week or even once a month. There's a lot of aloneness in between those breakfast or luncheon meetings.

Which is worse? To be alone and single, or to be widowed/divorced with children who are miles away, don't care about parents, or actually tell their parents they're on their own, the kids have their own lives to live?

Like the children who face the distortions and evils of federalized education, the aging face the effects of the "me" generation of working women who compete with men, despise homemaking and figure their parents should be on their own or in a "home". The sense of family, duty, and kinship has been washed out of the minds of the children of the "me" generation, the kids attended public schools where they learned about free sexuality, aberrant sexuality and "tolerance" for all things irrelevant and intolerance for our heritage and traditions.

The photographs on the walls and dressers bring memories but not voices, appearances but not flesh. Don't send me a photo, give me a bit of your time! I can see moving images on the television via cable, VCR or DVD. It isn't images that is missing, it is love. We're a people who don't understand that the aging need love just as do children. In fact this generation doesn't understand much when it comes to relationships, and they know nearly nothing about genuine love.

Yes, our parents and grandparents had no great resources by way of books and Ph.D. counselors but they raised up children with values. My generation and those ten to fifteen years down the line (those born 1935-50) brought children into a materially-obsessed world and sent them to federalized schools to learn that their primary concern is diversity, tolerance and cross-cultural unity. Family? The state is the family!

Woodstock was indeed a cultural phenomenon of throwing away our heritage in favor of the escapism of drugs and licentiousness.

Several new "life care" centers have been built in my area since I moved here in October of 1998. You go there one-quarter to half dead and come out in a box very dead. It is not emotionally healthy for people who can think and feel and comprehend to have a physical ailment put them into an environment of continual death and dying. The family structure that God created provides for the old to fade away in the loving arms of the younger, and the children to be taught the responsibilities of being a child, an adult and an elder. The inevitability of death has to be understood, grief is to be accepted and not scorned, but then life needs to abound with meaning for all ages, including the elderly with all their aches and pains. Perhaps some of those pains would vanish with loving care more than with the most expensive new medication.

Until America reaches back to grab hold of the old family values, we shall have the discarded, the lonely, the aching in soul and spirit, those who know that while they may have kinfolk somewhere, they aren't really part of the family and never will be. We're like stray animals waiting to be snatched up and put in the pound as soon as we need a little more help with getting things done.

Bravo America, for federalizing the home and nuclear family right out of general existence and into your forgotten and revised "history" that lauds the young and beautiful. They should be warned that they are on the list to become discards when their youth and beauty fades.

What goes around comes around. Certain laws cannot be repealed or reinterpreted by warped adjudicators.

Copyright 2004 Dorothy Anne Seese

(Editor's Note: Actual statistics here for cause of death in all age groups. Scroll down about 2/3 of the page for ages 65+. PDF file. Isolation and neglect certainly contribute to the ill health of elders, but there is no statistical verification that substance abuse plays a large part in morbidity or early death of most elders. Actual statistics (though none available after 1999) demonstrate that about 182 out of a thousand elders aged 85 or older are confined to nursing homes.

In my own nursing experience, roughly 80% of hospice patients are kept at home until they die by grown children or other relatives. Only 20% are placed in some kind of assisted living or nursing facility, and most of these require a much higher level of nursing care than even the most loving family can provide, especially given the burden of paying taxes and all the rest of the insanity of our present society. Sadly, there are still far too many who actually have no family or have been frankly abandoned.

This is not to detract in any way from the points made by this article, since the basic problem remains as described, but it seemed good to show the statistics and my own experience for perspective. Susan Callaway, RN)

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