Life is maintenance.
A person begins and ends their lives receiving maintenance. The middle part of life, otherwise known as adulthood is spent providing maintenance.
If you find yourself speaking to your children and your parents in the same tone of voice, then the odds are you’re a maintainer. People are depending on you to keep shit in order and to drive them around. Providing this service is an obligation, although the quality of service varies widely depending on resources, capability and willingness of the provider.
There are some minimum standards, and as usual we’ve had to make laws to assist some people with understanding what obligation means. Section 215 of the Criminal Code of Canada provides clarity to the mentally and morally challenged if they can’t grasp what the obligation entails.
“An offence is committed if an individual fails to provide necessaries of life to a person under his or her charge if that person is “unable, by reason of detention, age, illness, mental disorder or other cause, to withdraw himself from that charge, and is unable to provide himself with the necessaries of life.”
It sucks a bit that we actually had to write down rules. Apparently, someone, somewhere, needs the prospect of a year in jail hanging over their heads to stop them from dropping Grandma off at the landfill because she’s outlived her usefulness and she smells funny. The number of elder abuse cases continues to rise regardless of the law though. I suppose people are living longer and so the maintenance window keeps expanding. Eventually someone is halfway through installing a chair lift upstairs and they fucking snap. Next thing you know, Granny’s off to the dump.
I guess that old folks homes are like a landfill only without the seagulls or the criminal charges.
But abandonment probably isn’t the most prevalent form of elder abuse. Yelling at old people and hitting old people likely lead the way, followed by taking their money and valuables. Denying or just barely providing the necessities mentioned in the criminal code are another matter altogether. I think it takes some serious dedication to pull that shit off because it would take time. There are frail grannies and there are scooter riding four hundred pound grannies. So, if you decide that ” fuck it, we’re not feeding her anymore” and she had access to water, it could take months for scooter granny to stop being a burden. Other than an S.S. academy, I don’t know where a person would acquire the kind of commitment needed to starve someone. So, starving granny is probably a rare occurrence.
I suppose there are other necessaries that can be withheld that would be more efficient than taking food away. For almost half the year in Canada all you’d have to do is wheel her outside and leave her there. Depending on the month and how many Afghans she had it could be over in a matter of hours. You might even get away with it if you claim that one of the kids put her out because she wanted to watch the Northern Lights. Then that kid went out with friends and everyone else assumed she was in her room knitting.
A frozen granny is certainly abusive. But, we call it criminal negligence if the Northern Lights excuse holds water, or murder if it can be ascertained that granny was deliberately winterised. That leaves me with the sense that the term elder abuse seems to be more focussed on prolonged abuse than a few hours on a deck in December.
So, I’m back to speculating about how a person got to the point where they’re O.K. with months or even years of grinding on granny.
Resentment is probably a good place to start. I have no personal experience to draw from that would help me understand the mindset. Both of my parents died quickly and they were capable until the end. We assisted them as necessary and occasionally bitched about them being a pain in the ass, but my obligations to my parents were mostly enjoyable. I was always able to feel some satisfaction that my provisions to them were balancing the scales for all the things they had provided to me.
Come to think of it, I’m sure the old man had a moment or two where he looked longingly at a Corvette and instead ponied up for five new bikes and a station wagon. But my parents didn’t decide to December deck a couple of kids so they could get the vette. They accepted their obligation and carried on.
My parents were aware that the level of care they needed to provide their children was going to lessen as the kids got older. Not so with the elderly. Limited care eventually turns into full time care and the next thing you know you’ve got an adult sized infant to look after. I can see how that circumstance would cumulatively have an effect on a caregiver, when a funeral is the only remedy to their current state of affairs.
I’ve almost vomited changing an infant diaper so I’m guessing that an adult sized shit in an adult sized diaper might provide some negative sensory stimulation. So if you add limited mobility, dietary restrictions and deteriorating sensory ability to shitty diapers, you end up with a recipe for resentment.
Also, I’m going to assume that if you find yourself in an adult diaper life , that you care deeply for the person whose ass you’re now wiping. It’s very likely that at some point in your relationship with that person a conversation happened that went something like this, ” If I ever get to the point in my life where you have to wipe my ass, please put a pillow over my face.”
Most people don’t go the pillow route though. We go the old folks home route because we can’t continue to provide the necessary care. Also, I’m relatively certain that “Well officer, we were having a pillow fight” isn’t going to pass a credibility test after C.S.I. discover microscopic Serta fibres stuck to granny’s dentures.
I think if a person gets to the point where they start thinking about pillows and witnesses, then it’s time to start paying attention to A Place For Mom commercials.
Maybe biology and instinct guide some of our decisions. Way back in our ancestral history, old people were an anomaly. Most of the time, entropy took its toll well before anyone had to even consider tying some sticks together to make a dark ages walker. If for some reason a tribe member managed to accumulate some grey hair, they were pretty much on borrowed time until the next tribal event that involved running. When running was involved, the healthy made choices to carry non-crippled children, and old people were like a lame impala. Kind of a natural selection thing where the saber tooth tigers cleaned up the old and infirmed while the rest of the herd made their escape. So it could be that we’re programmed to abandon liabilities for the sake of the tribes overall well being.
Don’t know for sure. I’m speculating.
So assuming a person has an option to rehome burdensome Granny, then why would you choose to keep her around and abuse her? And, what exactly constitutes abuse?
Maybe when granny was younger she was a first class twat. Maybe, she’s now a first class old twat. Maybe the caregiver is now the powerful one in the relationship and it’s payback time. I would think that separating yourself from granny would be the smart path to take, and if you’re hell bent on vindictiveness then pick a sketchy old folks home. But, different strokes for different folks I guess.
It’s more likely though that granny is being looked after because the caregiver wants granny’s cash and jewelry. And maybe her Prius.
Because in Canada the rent on a room in a care home is based on how much money granny’s got. Its in the best interest of the family to have granny become as broke as possible before she becomes a home girl and that might take some time and perhaps some persuasion.
So granny is living in the basement. Abuse is occurring and the stimulus for the abuse could be greed with a dash of resentment. It could be revenge with a dash of vindictiveness. It could be that the egg doesn’t fall far from the ovary and granny’s caregiver is as big a nutbar as granny.
Regardless of motive I’m confident that any elder abuse suggests the likelihood of an abuser with faulty head wiring. I mean, how much satisfaction can a person get from slapping around a granny in a wheelchair?