Retirement is a bitch. Retirement homes are more than meh.
My grandfather has Parkinson’s, my grandmother has multiple “dark zones in her brain” forgets everything and has giving up on walking since looking at her husband getting crazier and crazier isn’t helping either.
My dad is bringing them every Saturday for lunch, a bit of TV and family time. It’s now an automatic, long process. It’s more than exhausting, it’s killing all of us to watch a once smart and funny old man getting physically so thin, so stiff and pretty much being a vegetable trying to grab nurses’ breasts and that my mom has to feed before eating. In the rare occasions where he is himself and has all his conscious, he always says “I’m sorry”.
What the fuck is the point of all that. Seriously. It fades out my good memories with him and he’s suffering a slow death.
I don’t know what will be my end but I hope to work until the last day of my life and die in my sleep at home. I never want to be put in a retirement home. My dad’s company works on retirement homes’ ways to do a better job since more that 20 years and I know the numbers: there is no way that elderly’s quality of life gets better because there will be much more old folks than people taking care of them. It’s already a mess and it’s NOTHING compared to the next wave, the baby-papy boom generation.
If something like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s happens to me, I hope I’ll be strong enough and have the possibility to end my life with a sunset, some drugs in my blood and maybe, hopefully a handjob.
It would be nicer, more human and cost-effective for everybody than what we do today.