Agism in the Church. . .

My 91 year old mother is a nursing home resident.  Several falls and memory issues created the need for her to have more care than could be supplied in the home where she lived for 51 years.  I fully regret the choice although I know of no other option available to my brother and me.  Her frail condition was made worse when she fell and broke her femur -- barely after a month there.  Her memory has deteriorated even more without the familiar surroundings and routine of her home and phone.  Although I have visited two different weeks and my brother is there to visit sometimes 2-3 times a week, we have been forced to schedule those visits and limit them due to COVID protocols and short-staffing.  Her sister-in-law was told to come back later -- after driving an hour to visit -- because my mother is napping.  Mom is 91 and does not have many days left.  I fear those days are being hastened and her life diminished by the was we treat the elderly and infirm.

It is no secret that nursing homes have become a dumping ground for people we no longer want to deal with -- not with their physical or mental frailty anyway.  Long before COVID turned them into incubators of death, nursing homes seldom improved the quality of the lives of our aged and inform parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  But we live in a world which values independence more than any other blessing and so we did what we thought was necessary for us, even if it proved to be less than salutary for our family members.  We told ourselves we were doing this for them.  Funny, if my mom fell at home (as she had a time or two before), she got a bruise or a bump.  On the hard surface of a nursing home dining hall, she broke the largest bone in her body.  Some have said we are killing our aged and infirm with kindness -- literally!

Though we structured assisting living facilities and nursing homes to benefit those frail in body or mind, we were the main beneficiaries.  They could be forgotten and we could be consoled in forgetting them because we were assured that they were being well cared for.  Now I am wondering if we are the ones who are suffering for the segregation of the aged into their homes with paid care-givers, assisting living centers, and skilled nursing facilities.  The loss of the older members of society to closed doors or institutions has left us without the voice and wisdom of many and, even more pointedly, left us with a false impression of what love is.  Love means being burdened and without a burden, it is arguable if there is truly love.

So what has the growing isolation of the aged done to the rest of us?  For one thing, it has deprived us of what it means to be family.  The nuclear family is a modern creation made possible by improved economics, medicine, and services designed for the child and the aged.  Just as we have shuffled off our children to day care where strangers raise our children, so we have packed up our aged and given their care over to people we do not know.  Without the children or the elderly around us, we thought they and we were better off.  Instead, such isolation and insulation has proven the poverty of programs designed to segregate people by age.  It is not simply that children and the aged need us, we NEED them.  

Could it be that the reason so many young people are questioning the need or value of marriage, children, and family is that they are the first fruits of a generation in which we were isolated in our homes, in our leisure hours, and even in Church?  Children and their growing fears and anxieties are proof positive that they need the voices, the touch, the wisdom, and the experience of those who have weathered the storms of life and still smile, laugh, hope, and pray.  The aged left to the sounds and smells of nursing home staffed with a minimum wage staff have taught us that memories and lives do not improve in such environments.  Now it is time for us to realize and affirm we are suffering from this self-imposed isolation.

If you are a longtime reader of this blog, you already know my feelings about Children's Church and the desire of some, even Lutherans, to segregate people according to age in worship, Sunday school, and Bible study.  The dangers of such segregation usually spoken with regard to failure to teach our children the liturgy -- a pedagogical fault.  But there are many other dimensions to the assignment of people according to age.  We already have built in dividers -- from time to preference.  The healthy Church, like a healthy family and community is multi-generational -- problems and all, of course, but also the benefit of wisdom, experience, and differing perspectives to all ages!