Integrity

One of the most difficult things to accomplish in America, i find, is to build up and keep your integrity and dignity as you age. Wrinkles start to show, your hair starts to gray, and before you know it, you're sitting in a wheelchair in a nursing home surrounded by other elders in a drugged-up, semi-vegetable state of mind and body. It's depressing but it's true. We abandon our elders to the system; once they get to the physical point where we can't take care of them ourselves in our own homes, we put them in a nursing home and, most of the time, we forget about them or get too busy with our own lives that we rarely ever visit.

I work in a nursing home. Ours is, i will admit, one of the best nursing homes in our area (and the only one in our town that provides dementia and memory care). But the nursing assistants, nurses, and administrative staff can only do so much, and if the resident's family and friends don't visit, our residents become depressed, their sense of relationship with the outside world goes down, and so their integrity goes down. Interaction with life outside the nursing home let's them know they are still important to us; that they still have a social life;  that we still care for and love them. Also, as their physical state declines, so does their dignity. Imagine, you are young, you can brush your teeth and use the toilet by yourself. Suddenly, you're 93, and can no longer walk to the bathroom, so you need help. Their independence is compromised, and therefore their pride takes a major slap to the face. I know mine would...but then, this is probably just because i'm an American.

...Once i hit that dementia stage, though, i really hope i go all-out with the crazy. I'm talking about throwing poop on the walls, biting the caregivers, and yelling random obscenities at passers-by. Heh, naw, i'm just kidding. But really, i just want to have fun when i'm old and physically unstable. When i'm 90 i wanna be telling stories (most of them will probably be made-up just to mess with people), eating ice cream all day, and taking long, long, long naps at least twice a day. Maybe my grandkids will visit, and maybe one of them will be the nurse that cares for my body after i die. For me, that's what integrity looks like. Leaving a legacy.