Life and Death and everything in between - part 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged... that we exit this world the way that we entered it. We dependent on someone else bathing, dressing, feeding us, turning us over in bed, checking on us in the night. It is a concept touched in 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Yet, a newborn or young baby receives, generally, more attention that the elderly despite needing many of the same basics of life. We would never leave a baby on its own, but it's the easiest thing to deposit someone in a hostel or nursing home and let someone else worry about them.

Nearly every Sunday, while visiting my Grandmother in her room at the hostel, I would think to myself that I hardly see anyone else visiting their relatives up there. One of the other residents was the mother of someone with whom I went through high school, and not once did I see him up there. The government pledges baby bonuses and other monetary incentives to help new mothers, which incidentally is OK by me, but the funding and the responsibility for the aged often falls short. In my Grandparents' case, too often the DVA pension would go up and then the age pension would be adjusted so that the increase was cancelled out. The cost of age care just never seemed to be a priority.

The crunch came recently, when nursing homes and residential aged care facilities were forced to close due to the owners owing in excess of $23 Million dollars, having gone into resident's bond money, and not paid staff superannuation for years. If there is no government regulation on this, then why don't we see the same thing happening for the other scenarios? Out of these closures and the news being reported, it has become quite clear that the government have not been providing the same level of protection for these residents, their money, and for the staff that care for them, as it would for other citizens. This is despicable, and tends to reinforce the "dump them and leave them" attitude.

What it does make you realise is your own mortality. In my case, this could be me in 50 years time. Left in some nursing home bed with no-one to feed me, wash me, or even talk to me. Our population is aging but the the moral sense of responsibility is not ageing with it.

It makes me extremely angry.