by dan pine
It was probably the salad –– that tiny plate of forlorn iceberg lettuce –– that did it for me. I contemplated the pathetic offering, along with the canned chili and microwaved hot dog, all of which passed for lunch, and I knew there was no way I could place my father in this nursing home or any other.
I had arranged to have lunch at the facility because I was shopping for a rest home and had wanted to check the quality of the food.
At 83, suffering from advanced prostate cancer and barely able to walk, my dad had reached a crossroads. It was clear he could no longer live independently. Alone and increasingly helpless, Dad finally had to face the nursing home as a serious option.
Of course, he wasn’t alone. Millions live in senior housing, some in sleek retirement villas, many others consigned to skilled nursing facilities.
Have you ever visited one?
There you will likely see old folks sitting listlessly on second-hand sofas staring at the TV or sitting around small tables in the dining hall, seated together but not speaking, like ghostly figures from an Edward Hopper painting.
I don’t mean to slam the nursing home industry. There is a need for such institutions, as our senior population remains a fast-growing segment of society. Most nursing home staffers are well meaning and reasonably well trained.
Here in the Bay Area, facilities like the Jewish Home, Rhoda Goldman Plaza and the Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living are models for the industry. It’s amazing what collective Jewish will and deep pockets can accomplish. I have seen firsthand how lovingly, and how well, these places serve their residents. I wouldn’t mind living at any one of them someday (though I’m in no rush).
Sadly, those residents are the lucky few. Most facilities cannot boast the kind of support enjoyed by the local Jewish senior residences. There’s no denying the essential truth of most American nursing homes. They are the dumping grounds for used-up seniors.
That’s what I saw during my search in L.A., places like the home with the terrible lunch. Though the sales director proudly escorted me about the grounds, I found the bedrooms small, dark and cramped, the hallways long and harshly lit. I couldn’t imagine my father enjoying even one second of contentment riding out the clock in that two-story holding tank with the fountain in the courtyard.
And then, over lunch, it hit me: I owed this man. I owed my father for a lifetime of kindness, laughter, insight and love. I owed him for his unflagging support throughout my youthful follies and adult missteps. I could not abandon him to the dump just because he seemed mutely willing to go. I pushed away that plate of lettuce shreds and decided to move in with him.
I happened to be recently divorced at the time and living temporarily in an apartment. I had the flexibility. So I found a nice house for rent — one with no stairs — and there we went, Dad and I, where he lived out the last months of his life in relative comfort.
His wasn’t an easy death. Hospice nurses, morphine pumps and bed sores stole away some of his dignity in those final days. Making things even harder, though his body had been trashed by the cancer, his keen mind remained defiantly intact. He knew exactly what was happening to him, right up to the end.
But when he finally died in the summer of 2001, he was surrounded by his children, his grandchildren, his books, his photographs, his life.
That same day, I served as a one-man amateur chevra kadishah, washing him, reading psalms to him, my vision blurred by tears, while waiting for the mortuary to take him away.
It wasn’t an easy death. But it was a good death.
I sympathize with families who are forced by circumstance to place their parents in nursing homes. For many, there are no viable alternatives, and for most it is truly the best solution. If they are fortunate enough to place their parents in places like the Jewish Home, zei gezunt, all should be well.
Luckily for my father, there was an alternative: He was already home.
Dan Pinedan@jweekly.com.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California