Friday, VII Easter
(John 21)
Atul Gawande, a physician, wrote an article on nursing homes in the New York Times yesterday. He said that society can do much better than provide institutions that avoid residents’ bed sores and maintain their body weights. He praised recent efforts to give the aged some independence and assistance with mutual cooperation when they can no longer live in their own homes.
In the gospel Jesus tells Peter that when you become old, someone else dresses you and leads you where you would not go. He is indicating that Peter will die a martyr’s death. But we can interpret Jesus’ words to mean that other people determine how the elderly live. Too often standard procedures deny seniors in nursing homes the semblance of privacy and most personal preference beyond their choice of television channel. An alternative vision, as the doctor in the Times suggested, would be institutions with at least individual rooms and opportunities for meaningful interaction with other residents.
We should do what we can to change the atmosphere of nursing homes from a place where the elderly are dying to one where they are really living out their last years. We might begin this effort by regularly visiting someone we know in a nursing home.
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