The best Home for the Elderly: a joint Family

The best Home for the Elderly: a joint Family – 23 Sep 14

Post author:Balendu
Post published:23/09/2014
Post category:Indian culture
Post comments:0 Comments

I yesterday explained that especially in India there are often elderly people who unnecessarily scold the younger generation. This obviously happens also in India’s joint families, where different generations are living together. Nevertheless, I believe that this is the best concept for elderly people!

It is the normal tradition in India and the way how a majority of people lives here: one or several sons stay in the parents’ home and found their family there, one day taking over the house. The parents, when growing older, support their children and take care of the grandchildren.

Unfortunately, this culture is slowly starting to break apart as well. Especially in big cities one can now see emerge some of those places that I found so horrible institutions when I first came to the west: homes for the elderly. Young people nowadays don’t necessarily have the urge to live together with their parents and once they get old, there has to be another arrangement for them. I hope however that it won’t come to the point in India that is there in the west.

In Germany, I have talked with many people who regret having to send their parents or grandparents to homes for the elderly. Even though they have grown up in that culture, they feel that it isolates them so much and keeps them among strangers, in the care of strangers instead of in the loving hands of family. I have just recently talked to friends who have the vision of doing it differently. They want to move in with their parents one day and help them, take care of them to make sure that the last part of their lives is also beautiful and full of love.

One thing is for sure: most elderly people are more active, physically as well as mentally, when they live together with family. We have the best example here at the Ashram: my grandmother. At an age of anything above 90 years, she is still very fit, daily walks up to the kitchen to check what is going on there, has an eye on all the kids, knows exactly what is going on in the Ashram and generally supervises everything while sitting on her bed and looking out her window into the entrance hall. She is very clear in her mind and even though there are age-related physical ailments, she is all in all still quite healthy.

It is obvious – she gets so much to think about and to do while living here that both, her body and mind, has no chance to get in the situation that I have seen with many people in the west. Once they go into the home for the elderly, even if they were fit in their minds before, they often very quickly start reducing their mental activity, simply because the other inhabitants living there are always in such a state! They are lethargically sitting in their wheelchairs or ergonomic easy chairs, staring into the air or talking to themselves. If someone joins them with a sane mind and has nobody to talk to then, it is no wonder he or she ends up the same!

I have written so often about it but I can only repeat it again: don’t you think they all would love to be in the care of their loved ones instead? Not among strangers, no matter how close to their age and nurses, paid professionals to care for them?

No, a joint family is the best that can happen to an elderly person, I believe, and I hope that what my friend and I talked about could become true in future: that also the situation in the west changes and people start living together and helping each other instead of building more and more homes for the elderly!

Maybe however, you think, there are people who are not made for this, not ready to live with family? That’s what I would like to write about tomorrow!