Adulting Part Fifteen: Have You Ever Been to a Nursing Home?

You came into this world wearing a diaper, you’re going out that way too.

Have You Ever Been to a Nursing Home?

I have.

It can be depressing.

Often it is.

“The Home”, “Rehabilitation Care” “Assisted Living”, “Nursing Home” are all phrases used to describe a big facility with hundreds of little apartment style rooms, without kitchens, and little privacy where our elderly citizens go to stay until they die.

I saw my mom put my dad into a nursing home and I cannot tell you how much it angered me. She just couldn’t care for him because she was just as old and worn out as him. All of us kids live far away from all the things that were familiar to him so he didn’t want to move in with any of us.

Daily in-home caregivers were unreliable.

Parents of Boomers believe that Doctors are gods and that they and medicine can fix anything. They have no use for physical therapy, and if you don’t keep parts active, they quit working.

I witnessed all of this first hand.

If we didn’t want mom to get hurt caring for dad, this was the end result.

You came into this world wearing a diaper, you’re going out that way too.

It’s true.

Left: Willie Nelson. Right: Bruce Springsteen.

I once saw an AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) print ad that showed a knees-down shot of a pair of pretty well aged blue jeans and boots. Something you would imagine Willie Nelson (American Country singer) or Bruce Springsteen (American Rock and roll god) might wear. It conjured an image of a pretty interesting person who had seen a lot.

I felt the ad pretty well summed up Boomers, and I imagine that was the intent.

I look around and see all the nursing care facilities and always say, “I’m not going there”.

Most of the people I know who are my age say the same thing.

Just look around you’ll notice them being built too. There are lots of them. I don’t know whom these real estate entrepreneurs think they’re catering to. Maybe it’s you, because we’re not going there in masses as they hope.

Mark my words.

There’s a lot of vitriol (bitterly harsh or caustic language or criticism) spewed towards Boomers from the younger generations. I’ve seen all of the “rationale” and generally the arguments are unfounded or parroted from a source that has an ulterior motive.

The Rise of America’s Little Generals

History is being rewritten and erased.

Popular culture today is very good at encouraging self-sabotage, or “victimhood”. If you constantly feel others are controlling you, denying you what you want or need, making you do what you don’t want to do, then you have allowed yourself to become a victim. 

Blaming others for things that happen to you is how the submission begins. 

And Now They’re Invading The Right: Don’t Stay a Victim

Your parents, the actions of the previous generation(s), are typically the scapegoats (person who is blamed for the wrong doings, mistakes or faults of others) that public education and other sources intentionally gives you.

Yu Xiangzhen was only 13-years-old when Mao kick-started his bloody Cultural Revolution in 1966. The schoolgirl read Mao's Little Red Book, wore the red armband of the Red Guards, and describes just how indoctrinated China's school system had made her and her fellow students, who she says were taught that Mao was closer to them than their own family. Mao Zedong’s ‘Little Generals’

Sound familiar?

I remember as a kid seeing news clips of the “Red Guards” in Communist China. The Red Guard was also known as Chairman Mao’s “little generals”. The leader of this communist country knew that he had to get the children thinking the way he needed them to think as adults in order for Communism to grow in China. These children believed that they would die to protect Chairman Mao and many did die in this period. He enlisted them at grade school levels and they were told to destroy anything considered as “old” – old ideas, customs, culture and habits. Called the “Cultural Revolution” (1966-1976), it was the slow death of China as a great country.

The Cultural Revolution brought oppression. Schoolteachers were persecuted, “enemies” of the state were killed, news was controlled, families were controlled and food was controlled.

This is what’s going on today.

And the vitriol for the older generations will continue.

And it will happen to your generation too Dear youngster.

Except all of the self inflicted anxiety, boredom, inability to self entertain will make old age for you exponentially harder because for you there will be no resilience, no tolerance and if the younger generations aren’t willing to assist you in old age, well that’s just karma (Fate or destiny resulting from one's previous actions) baby.

Just as we have to deal with our parents now, you’ll eventually have to deal with yours and at a pretty human level.

You have many years to arrive at the character and humility you’ll need. By the time it happens, more than likely any issues you have with them today will (hopefully) be gone and you’ll have to make some difficult decisions too.

Hopefully your generation will think of something better than nursing homes.

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