The threat of care

If we come to needing care or special protection, then it will be best if we have already found out how to make friends with the inevitable in life and to accept what is necessary with grace and gratitude.  That is in considerable measure a spiritual matter, it seems to me.  It is something to be faced and attended to long before, through the years of strength, activity and maturity.  Part of the homework is learning how to face reality and make friends with the truth. 

Now we have the gleaming spires of the modern Retirement Village.  It looms up before us in our senior years as a serious option.  What is new about this phenomenon, I think, is that we are invited to make decisions about moving to a retirement village before we actually, physically or mentally, have need of it.  It is seen as prophylactic.  And so one silly superfluous wisdom wafting around these days is:  Don’t leave it too late!  You must consider your prospects in wealth and health – not be blinded by how content you are feeling right now.  You must ponder all the perils ahead in life.  It is an attempt to ward off adversity, everything nasty such as dependence, loneliness, frailty, becoming pathetic. 

So now we are pestered with daily advertisements and glossy brochures depicting all manner of happy senior people, usually well groomed, poncing about in pleasant surroundings, bowling, laughing, lounging and chatting, sometimes disporting themselves embarrassingly in some swimming pool, sometimes being led in wretched geriatric calisthenics…  There are always beautiful flowers nearby.   I notice that what these shining handouts do not show us are the inmates in real care, the ones not smiling, the ones sliding into dementia, needing to be fed, the ones with collapsed spines from osteoporosis and falling.

The modern retirement village has a hierarchy of living arrangements.  It categorises and labellises life.  You may have an independent villa or apartment.  That means that you will live in your own self-contained space with largely your own décor and stuff, but have access to communal facilities such as a dining and social area, and perhaps a gym, a hair salon, a bowling green and suchlike.  It is all very contemporary and jolly, and safe.  You will have a call button with which to summon help if you fall… in practice it turns out to be not so simple.

The operative word in these places is Happy.  They live with style.  They have a weekly Happy Hour.  One retirement village at Howick has a video I watched with mounting horror, which shows all the geriatrics prancing around joyously to pop music.  It was false to the point of terminal embarrassment.  This dreadful video was intended to attract me to their village. 

Or you may have some closer care arrangement, depending on your needs, including professional dementia care.  Withal, you have their guarantee of watchfulness over your welfare, on-call status of the management and staff, protection of your asset… 

OK.   But what you buy in most of these places is not ownership of your villa or apartment.  Ownership remains with whoever owns the business.  You buy something called a Licence to Occupy.  It is pretty expensive.  It more or less equates to rent in advance.  You must also pay ongoing fees to cover management and costs.  These fees only increase over time.  And eventually you or your beneficiaries get back some substantially reduced sum after various factors including what management had to do to bring your/their unit up to date again. 

Not all retirement villages have this arrangement.  I believe there are some where you actually do buy and own your living premises.  Lawyers are required to make sure their clients understand this difference.

These places offer an illusion of safety and security – but my impression is that anyone can drive into and through our nearby villages, any time, without question, as I have frequently done.  You are no safer living there than where I am living, and hope to remain.  And as for on-call response if you fall… well, anecdotal evidence suggests you are really on your own.  It would be wise to have your fall during weekday working hours – otherwise you may be calling your own ambulance.  Prompt, caring, professional response simply didn’t happen in reports I have heard.

They have no sound of children playing in these places, or adolescents occasionally hooning around.  Everyone there is elderly, or getting that way.  How boring is that!  I have heard that they can have fights at their Happy Hour –that would be some excitement perhaps.  Consuming topics at Happy Hour include the weather, the temperature, their little gardens, the village management, and everyone’s aches and pains.

The BBC series Waiting for God dealt definitively and dramatically with some of these issues.  Someone had seen the capitulation and horror of it all and put it into drama.  Waiting For God dealt often sensitively and always hilariously with two retired people who had actually plenty of life – which their new surroundings in a retirement home simply sought to deny, repress, control and quell. 

And there is the classic British movie, Mrs Caldicott’s Cabbage War, a delicious account of rebellion in a retirement home.  Somewhere in that movie Mrs Caldicott describes the retirement home as “this overpriced knacker’s yard”. 

My own impression of one of the local retirement villages is its similarity to photos of Siberian gulags.  It has rows of grey villas, relieved only by pretty flowers they may have planted out the front.  The village has rules, a list of which is supplied to residents when they take occupancy.  The rules restrict what you can do to alter your villa or apartment and your life there – changing decor, installing things, having pets, making modifications… 

However, it suits people who are frightened of danger, ageing and dependence.  For me.. well, if I became obliged to become an inmate of one of these places, I hope I would do so with grace and dignity and a minimum of fuss.  But I devoutly hope not.  It would certainly hasten my demise. 

Slumbering on…

Parliament's Speaker David Carter announced the other day that the traditional prayer he uses to open daily sittings of Parliament will remain as is, with its Christian references.  Here is the prayer:

Almighty God, humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Just about everything is wrong with this prayer, and the problem is, where to start? 

·         It is addressed to God.  It assumes that God knows, cares, or bears any special regard for the NZ House of Representatives, beyond what he/she bears for the Taneatua Bowling Club.  It assumes that the cursory recitation of this prayer because it is required in Standing Orders somehow gets God’s attention.

·         It professes humility.  That is not normally my impression of this assembly.

·         It claims that the members want guidance, that they are keen to lay aside all private and personal interests, that they seek to debate and decide things to the glory of God, etc – some or all of which is difficult to believe.

·         It assumes that “the maintenance of true religion” is the business of the NZ Parliament.  It decidedly is not.

·         It assumes that they are all professing Christians, or that if they are not they ought to be – whereas some are of other faiths and some are of none.  This is offensive and dishonest.

The Parliamentary prayer has quite a history, I find.  It was realised as far back as the 1850s that it would always be a bit of a minefield.  They solved the problem at one time by bringing in some hapless cleric to say the prayer, as it were vicariously, each time Parliament convened – that seemed to some to absolve them from any direct responsibility.  The current prayer, read each day by Mr Speaker, has been around for quite a while now.  I presume it was put together by some Anglican prelate and was thought unexceptional at the time.  It assumed that this is a “Christian country”, something some people still believe. 

Speaker Carter recently followed a very low-key consultation process with MPs and offered an alternative prayer which removed religious references to "Almighty God" and "Jesus Christ our Lord" from the older version.  But what he proposed turned out to be ten times worse.

His alternative prayer included lines in Maori - E te Atua Kaha Rawa - that translates to "Almighty God," something Assistant Speaker Trevor Mallard described as "almost dishonest."  Carter proposed to farewell the deity in English and welcome the deity back in Maori.

As well as that, the Speaker would have included a daily acknowledgment to the local tribe Te Ati Awa.  To most of New Zealand that simply beggars belief.  It is arrogant, unnecessary and embarrassing.

This is the alternative prayer Speaker Carter suggested:

E te Atua Kaha Rawa (Tr: Almighty God) Ka whakamanawa taua hunga katoa kua riro atu i mua i a tatau - moe mai okioki (We honour those who have gone before us - rest, slumber on).  We recognise the mana whenua, Te Ati Aawa, the kaitiaki of this region, Te Upoko-o-Te-Ika-a-Maui.  We acknowledge the need for guidance and lay aside all private and personal interests so that we may conduct the affairs of this House for the maintenance of justice, the honour of the Queen and the public welfare, peace, and tranquillity of New Zealand.  Amine (Amen).

I love the slumber on bit.  They might as well.  There will be little enough to edify them if they sit up and pay attention. 

Mr Carter refused to entertain any debate on further options; it would be either the current prayer or the alternative he proposed.  He refused any public comment also, clearly seeing it as a matter only for MPs.  Then he issued a statement saying: "A substantial majority of members expressed a view to retain the existing prayer. I intend to respect that wish."

Is all this really a measure of the extent to which the politicians are out of touch with reasonable sense and sensibility, with intellectual honesty, indeed with decency?  They are way out of their depth.

But they do need some serious and mindful observance with which to begin each parliamentary day.  So why not keep it simple and unexceptionable.  When the Speaker enters, all stand.  Let there then be one minute, and I mean 60 seconds timed by the Clerk of the House with a bell, of silence and stillness.  No one should enter or leave the house during that time.  That is all.  It may be seen by all as a moment of pausing and remembering.  It may be seen by some as a prayerful time.  That is all they need to do.