I woke up this morning thinking about what nursing homes are going to be like for baby-boomers. (I’m so hoping to die before that happens.)
My first thought was that if I make it to that stage, I would have to live with a bunch of women, since most men die before women. Tight perms and ugly clothes - for the women, not me.
A day in the life of…
Someone will wake you up, get you dressed, and sit you in a wheel chair, speaking directly in your face very loudly. They’ll switch on TV to their favorite program while they make your bed and potty you, slinging a cold wet face cloth over your face, swathing your mouth with Listerine. You’ll sit there or in the lounge waiting to be taken down to breakfast, which will be cold and tasteless, eating with people you wish you’d never met. (It will be a Jean Paul Sarte type of hell.)
Just think - you’ll be living in a home that you pay for some way or another, but you won’t have kitchen rights, you won’t be able to get your own coffee or meals; you certainly won’t be able to smoke or drink, and you will be treated pretty much like a child.
The nursing assistants, who will be working there because they just got out of prison or can’t get a better job, will lean over into your face and shout, “We are having entertainment today!”
“Do we get cookies too?” I’ll ask.
“Yes honey! Cookies and juice!” She screams back.
“What’s the entertainment?” I mutter as she walks away.
Turning, she quips, “It’s Beatles day! The High School band is coming and they are going to have a Beatles concert! Yeah, yeah, yeah!”
“They’ll butcher it!” I mumble.
Then all the losers who are in band come into the Home, doing an “Up-With People” routine, grabbing our hands and waving them in the air like we just don’t care, torturing my bursitus. It’s a veritable Woodstock, a real “happening”. The old bag in the wheel chair next to mine nudges me, smiling her toothless grin and says, “My son brought me a joint, come over to my room tonite and we’ll smoke it.” Only she’s the one with ahlzhiemers and forgets her son died of an overdose several years ago.
Refreshments are served after the wheel chair dance and concert and we get our cookie and dixie cup of cranberry juice. Various rock and roll artists are being played in the background, the same old, same old; CCR, the Stones, Grand Funk, etc. While I wonder to myself why we can’t ever have a Motown day, or Disco day, it’s always rock’n'roll. I guess that’s what the kids like.
Nap time. Everyone must take a nap. Back to bed. The NAs are going through my drawers and clothes, so I yell, “I don’t have any money, get the hell out!” I realize the afternoon shift personnel can barely speak English. Next thing I know I’m getting another tranqulizer. That’s not so bad.
Then supper - sitting with the same old bags at the same table, eating meager portions of awful food, listening to their same old stories on how much more successful their husbands were than me. I tell them their husbands were closet queens just to shake them up. That always works well.
Television in the lounge after that, and then thrown back into bed after one last potty trip, telling the NA I haven’t had a bowel movement in over a week. The NA responds, “Que?” Oh well, at least they are generous with the sleeping pills.
We baby-boomers have always liked our drugs. That will make it nice - if the NAs don’t steal them first that is.
Tomorrow we will have Euthanasia Registration Day.
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The story of Naaman the Syrian is one of dashed expectations and obedience as well. Naaman expected something wonderful and dramatic from Elisha, instead he was told to wash in the Jordan seven times. How lowly and mundane for a great General. The prophet wouldn’t even come out to see him, and he was expected to remove all of his clothing and bathe in a river, in front of all his retinue. It took his servants to convince him to do as Elisha instructed, and only then was he healed.