Something is Wrong...

I'm upset today, and it's not due to the fact that it has poured rain for more than 24 hours (it is pouring out there!). A number of things can factor into my upset-equation, but I'm mostly upset over my grandparents. They're in an assisted living home in Gibsons (a short ferry ride away), as they are now 90+ years old. They've done well though. They've stuck together, in the same room, for the past year or two, and for the same life for over 60 years. Until now: They've been separated. My grandmother's health has deteriorated to the point where she needs more constant care, so this weekend, they moved her to her own room on the other end of the complex, in the "more attentive care" section. My grandpa will remain where he is.

Now, this could've been much worse. If my grandma was unable to get in to this room, Plan B could've been a facility out of town, which would've been 10x worse.

The last time I saw my grandparents was last autumn. As we left, my grandma walked us out, and cried as she gave us hugs, and cried as we pulled away, waving her hankerchief in the air. She's conscious of her fragility, and wants nothing more than to go home; she prays for it. It broke my heart; the thought of being in a place where you are just breaking down and waiting for your moment is beyond comprehension to me at this stage.

This whole situation is breaking my heart again. My grandma worries so much about my grandpa, and now he won't be around. She's going to have some major problems with that; we all just know it.

What have we become? Is this really how we treat our old people, our parents, and grandparents? It's repulsive! It makes me hate the system we've created. This is not how it's meant to be. For ages past, elders were honoured, and more so as they aged. Families lived together, and the seniors lived with their families until they passed on. Or if they weren't living together already, they were taken in, and cared for.

The industrialization and wealth of our society has made us machines, and economic factors (liabilities); evolution has made us dead cold.

Back when families lived together, and everyone fit in to their roles, and there were relationships happening, and people believed in a god or an afterlife, things must've been better. Now we are just numbers, throwing money at problems and hiring others to do the dirty work of caring for our loved ones. As if preparing to die wasn't abhorrent enough, we have to now do it with perfect strangers. I don't want that for myself, do you?

Seeing a bunch of very old people, white and wrinkled, sitting around in diapers and giant bibs, babbling nonsense is incredibly sad to me. We start and finish our lives the same way.

I'm just a mess of thoughts and sadness today. It all makes me think of Malachi 4:5

See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.

I think it makes sense in the context of how we have come to treat our elders (our "fathers"). So I guess there's a glimmer of hope ... or maybe a threat of a glimmer.