The Sanity (or Insanity) of Nursing Homes

Why you don't think about getting old, but you probably should...

For the past nine months, I’ve been working as a Legal Assistant for an elder law firm. My eyes have really been opened to the immense struggles of getting old - those that go beyond the physical aches and pains of aging. It’s unsurprising that my recent visits to nursing homes thus inspired my first Substack short story (published here for reference 😊). As excited as I was to share that story, though, I am much more ecstatic to give some insight into the thoughts and heart behind it.

For starters, it wasn’t until I started my job that I realized how little I actually considered aging. Sure, I’ve noticed the formation of wrinkles on my face (who knew you’d start to see them at 23 years old?!) or the soreness in my bones that comes more often with the passage of each year. I’ve noticed, of course, as my parents have aged. I’ve seen the decline in their ability to get a good nights’ sleep or the increased frequency with which their backs “go out.” But I never really think about what will happen to them - or me - when they can no longer care for themselves. That just seems so far away for my parents, who are raising a bouncing-off-the-walls seven-year old, deeply involved in their church, and - in the case of my father - maintaining a high-stress job as the president of a successful engineering company.

But when I started meeting people who can barely sign their own name anymore due to incessant tremors, who can’t hear unless you shout at them, or, in some cases, who can’t even remember their loved ones, my perspective shifted. I started to really consider how quickly life slips away, and how soon I actually will be - God willing - in that same group.

My first visit to a nursing home was the most eye-opening experience I’ve had in my job (yet). There were many people hunched over in wheelchairs who simply stared blankly at the walls, with not so much as a glance in my direction as I passed by. There were people lying in their beds in dark rooms, staring at a TV screen whilst their roommate moaned from the bed beside them. Most of the workers appeared over-worked and exhausted. The whole event was honestly quite depressing. Aging and death are painful. While I suppose I’d already known that, this experience made it much more apparent to me than before. In that moment, the sheer imminence of aging terrified me - even at my young age of 23.

Then, a pointed question for other young people popped in my head: Have you ever considered how strange it is that we send the elderly people in our community, en masse, to buildings where they - harshly put - wait to die?

There were certainly people in the home I visited who had family there with them, and still others whose supportive family members were simply at work for the day (it was, admittedly, the middle of a weekday when I visited). But I was still saddened to discover how much time these residents spend staring absentmindedly at blank walls - after, in many cases, dedicating their lives to supporting their communities.

The most shocking discovery I’ve made about elderly people while at my job, though, identified a glaring error in my own understanding of aging. It seems that we often dismiss the stories of the elderly - the incredible history within them - and the possibility that they may have extensive wisdom to share or new ideas to contribute to our world. This is certainly due in some part to the dark rooms in which they reside - but I believe it is more often due to our inability to just slow down and learn from them. We able-bodied people tend to move at the breakneck pace typical of our society, and we don’t typically take the time to sit down and talk with the elderly, who know so much about this life that we have yet to learn.

Still worse is that we do sometimes pay them a visit, but we don’t always listen to them. Maybe we assume that, since they live in a nursing facility, the elderly in homes must have some form of dementia, or must not be as “sharp” as they once were. I think it is typical to assume, at least implicitly, that the decay of the body necessitates the decay of the mind. This is sometimes true - there are certainly diseases that make the mind atrophy alongside the aging body. But this isn’t always the full story - it may really just be the decay of the body that’s resulted in an elderly person’s placement in a home.

Ignoring the elderly translates into ignoring their wisdom, which is certainly very valuable - but ignoring the elderly is also how we ignore their pain. Assuming an old person is remembering things incorrectly or must simply be “wrong” because they are old neglects the suffering they may be facing - the boredom of staring at a wall all day or the lapse in proper nursing home care that has resulted in painful injuries or an acceleration in physical or mental decline.

My story, Room 246, was written with these thoughts in mind. I aim to identify a key societal misunderstanding of the elderly through the piece.

Are we too wrapped up in our own pride and youth to see that there may be something deeper in the statements of the elderly? Do we just assume that, when an old person tells us something’s not right, they must be confused? Or do we do the due diligence to pay attention to what they are experiencing?

I also hope, reader, that you will consider what this means for your future. The way we treat the elderly, and where we keep them, will one day impact you, too. As much as you may try, you can’t stay young forever.

Thus, perhaps we should all consider what life will be like once we’re old - and how we can improve our futures by improving the way we treat the elderly today.

This post is dedicated to my grandparents, Cubby and Jackie, who have four children, seven grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren (so far). They’ve been married for 62 years! They have so much wisdom to share.