Either Way

There are cultures in this world that value family life above everything else. Families live in close-knit groups, helping and supporting one another. Aside from the obvious economic benefits of such an arrangement, there are also social advantages to this type of life. In particular, I am thinking of the benefits of the sort of circular family life where the youthful and the aging occupy the same home and find mutual improvement.

When I was growing up, my Grandparents lived on a farm about twenty miles from our home. We visited regularly on birthdays, holidays and other occasions and we enjoyed their company often at our home whenever they would come. At the time, this seemed ideal. I had grandparents who were close enough that I could see them whenever I wanted and they had the privacy of their own lives whenever they wanted. Then, unexpectedly, my Grandpa died. This left Grandma alone on the farm and caused their children considerable uneasiness. What was once considered privacy was now called isolation. Quiet evenings turned into potentially dangerous situations and living twenty miles from her family seemed like hundreds.

The family decided that it would be best for Grandma to live in town, near all of her family members. I remember the arguments about the pros and cons of putting her into a nursing home, leaving her on the farm, renting an apartment. I also remember that Grandma was not at all happy after that. The only thing she wanted was to live out her life in the home she had built with her husband. She would have preferred to go with him when he went, but in lieu of that she just wanted to be as near him as possible, which to her meant being on the farm where they had lived happily together all their lives.

As a young child, I could not understand why this was such a hard thing for their children to understand and accept. Grandma just wanted to be home. What could be simpler? But they would not hear of it. They said that they loved her too much to allow her to die alone on that farm. For the next few years, Grandma was very unhappy. When I would go to visit her, it wasn't the same as before because to me, Grandma's house was as much a part of Grandma as anything. Without her house, she just didn't seem like herself. Her family visited her every day, cooked for her, brought her things, watched over her, took her to the doctor, etc. But the one thing she wanted most in all the world was denied her.

Since becoming an adult, I have pondered on this unhappy situation many times. I understand now that the chief motivating factor in bringing Grandma away from her home was fear; fear that she would fall, fear that no one would be there if she got hurt, or needed help or couldn't get up or had a stroke or any of the myriad possibilities they could think of. Fear, not love, is what motivated them to take Grandma away from the home she loved and put her into a place where nothing she did brought relief from the grief she felt in losing Grandpa.

There are cultures, as I said, where the families do not isolate their Grandparents. They live with their families, often in their ancestral homes where they mentor the children, help when they can and in turn are lifted and blessed by the energy and vigor of the rising generation. They are given the respect and reverence they have earned and deserve in an atmosphere of tolerance, family unity and love.

My Grandma died in the hospital, unhappy and troubled. In another culture, this would not have been the case. Grandma would have been living with her family, in her own home. Children would have been around her all the time, attending to her needs, listening to her stories and cheering up her heart until it was time for her to go. I wish now that I had been given that opportunity, not only to help my Grandma, but to learn from someone who has lived a complete life what it means to die. Death should not be something we fear so much that we are willing to put someone through hell to make them avoid it for a few more hours. Death is a part of life. 
 

When we isolate Grandma, we isolate ourselves from her wisdom. The absence of this wisdom is the cause of the fear that selfishly ignores the true needs of others in order to protect itself from the imagined threat. It's a little like what goes on today at the airport where they irradiate everyone because they are afraid that a terrorist might be among us. So, they definitely kill you slowly to protect you from possibly being killed quickly. Either way you are going to die. But why should we allow their fear of the possible threat of a quick and early death make us subject to the sure threat of death by radiation, which, though slower, is still a threat? I know what Grandma would say. She would say, “Either way...”