BATRANII, un spin in talpa?
Raspunsuri - Pagina 3
lorelaim spune:
Un articol trist... din pacate in lb engl - mii de scuze ca nu am apucat sa-l traduc.
Why I wish my grandmother would die
by URSULA HIRSCHKORN
Last updated at 23:37pm on 10th October 2007
Educated at Oxford, she had a dazzling mind and a devilish wit that made men fall at her feet. Now dementia has left Olwyn an empty shell. In a provocative but deeply moving cri de coeur, her granddaughter says this is a life simply no longer worth living
Of course, it sounds appalling, almost inhuman, but I wish my grandmother would hurry up and die. Not because I don't love her, or because I can't wait to get my hands on her millions (if only she had any), but because my memory of her is being vandalised by dementia.
My grandmother, Olwyn, was a real stunner, with brains to match. Born in 1918 in Cardiff, her father was a docker, her mum a clever, frustrated housewife. Most of her friends left school at 13 to help out at home but she won a scholarship to study French at Oxford University.
Right up until her 80s she could still quote poems she'd learnt at school. She would slip as easily between English and French as she had on long childhood journeys, when we'd driven through France, and she'd introduced me to the delights of Orangina and fresh croissants - a revelation to this English child brought up on Mother's Pride and Kia-Ora.
At Oxford, with her tiny frame, luscious auburn hair and sparkling green eyes she cut a swathe through the men, who'd never before encountered a feisty Welsh beauty like her. At least that's how she told it, and who am I to argue?
From this string of glamorous suitors she picked my grandfather, a handsome blueeyed, blonde-haired, black sheep of a solid northern family. The story goes that she went to my grandfather to ask for his help in choosing which one of her admirers she should marry.
He replied: "Why, me, of course," and for once she didn't argue. They were married in 1940.
During the war my grandmother gave birth to two children, but she didn't let that stop her living a wild life in London during the Blitz.
Making friends with the crowds of refugees fleeing fascism in Europe ignited a revolutionary zeal. After the war she dedicated herself to bettering the lives of the working classes she sprang from.
In her long career as a teacher she always championed the underdog, teaching adults who had no other access to education. She was a brilliant teacher.
Once, in a flash of inspiration she invited me, aged ten, and my pet kitten Arnold into her class. If she'd been aiming to get life to mimic the chaos of the set text, Gerald Durrell's My Family And Other Animals, it worked. Particularly after Arnold escaped from his basket.
It's this irreverent streak that so appealed to me as a child. You could never accuse my spiky grandmother of being a typical granny. She worked until she was 65 - winning an extension to the usual retirement age for women - and she was always far too fond of a handsome man for her husband's peace of mind. But she was so much fun.
Perhaps because she'd had a pretty tough childhood, she seemed determined to make mine magical. Every weekend she would plan an adventure.
We would travel miles in my grandparents' Austin Maxi, my grandmother alternating between singing tunelessly and yelling at my grandfather as we got lost down yet another country lane.
We explored stately homes, picturepostcard villages and magnificent museums. What made each trip extra special was that my grandmother instinctively understood that the really interesting things about all these places were the gift shop and the tearoom. I can measure my childhood in cream cakes and souvenir postcards.
Although these special days stand out, my grandmother was a huge part of my everyday childhood.
Following some idealistic notion - she was always big on ideals, expecting a revolution round every corner - our family, grandparents, mum, dad, two kids, goats and innumerable chickens, lived together in a ramshackle house in the country until I was eight. She was like a second mother to me, albeit sometimes a short-tempered and cranky one.
I will never forget the day she took the term pudding bowl haircut literally, plonked a Pyrex bowl on my head and cut around it.
The result was less than flattering, as I am sure anyone in my primary school class could tell you.
The fact that my grandmother was so much larger than life, that she wasn't your run-of-the-mill grandma occupied with baking, knitting and jam making, but was instead more likely to slip you a tenner to buy the very thing your mum had banned, has made her descent into dementia so hard to bear.
The blue rinse brigade are ten a penny, but my grandmother was always so much more colourful than other grannies. She was still dyeing her elfin crop vibrant henna red and wearing her distinctive slash of red lipstick well into her 80s.
And that's how I want to remember - racing with my grandfather to finish the cryptic crossword, rattling her tatty green Scrabble bag before trouncing me with a triple word score, or regaling us with unsuitable tales of her raunchy student days.
The smell of fresh baked Welsh cakes and fragrant Lapsang Souchong as she observed her daily afternoon tea ritual; the sweet perfumed Turkish Delight which we loved to share. These are the things I need my grandmother to conjure in my mind.
Her ability to make me brave - singing at the top of her voice to hurry me across the terrifyingly vertiginous road bridge to her tiny flat. Her badly wrapped presents that concealed just what you really wanted beneath creased second-hand paper. Her delicious smell of roses and Oil of Ulay. Her cackling laugh and her generosity.
I cannot bear this snappy, difficult, independent, funny, beautiful, clever woman to be erased and replaced by the shell she has become.
The first signs of her dementia crept in soon after my grandfather died in 2000, leaving her alone after 60 years of marriage. She was irascible in her grief and wouldn't take help from anyone; fiercely guarding her right to live independently as if some premonition told her it would soon be taken from her. To my shame, by this point in my life, my grandmother did not receive the attention from me that she deserved.
I was caught up with divorce, marriage, babies and all the other distractions of youth. I didn't visit and I didn't call - I wasn't that interested in how bad it was becoming.
Now I know I can never make up for this neglect. I can't let her know how much I love her, how much she means to me, how whenever I wear her red sparkly necklace I feel as if a part of her is with me, making me that bit braver than I really am. Because now she has no idea who I am.
I would hear from my mother about her walking alone, at night, in the rough part of the town where she lived, searching for her dead husband.
I would hear about the taxis called to her house in the early hours, only for her to deny ever ordering them. Of the neighbours sick of fielding their irate drivers, of the unscrupulous people who would prey on her frailty to get at her pension.
We discovered cheques she'd paid to people she didn't know and money given to dodgy builders who left her house uninhabitable.
I heard about her forgetting to eat, or to turn off the gas stove when she did cook for herself. Of my mother's battles to get her to accept meals on wheels and cleaners to keep her house fit for human habitation.
My grandmother sacked everyone who came to help her, telling them she wasn't after all an 'old person' at a mere 80-odd. Even at this grand old age she took a certain pride in the fact that by failing to eat she could finally fit into a size 8 again.
The last time I remember seeing my grandmother bearing any resemblance to her old self was at my nephew's christening in 2004. She came with my parents to my old flat - it was stacked with boxes as we were about to move and the disorder left her a little bewildered.
But as soon as she saw my baby son - then around nine months - she smiled until her dentures gleamed and took him on her knee, clucking at him like an old mother hen. Her hair still retained vestiges of its henna red glory and her trademark red lipstick was there, albeit a little smudged.
The next time I saw her was at my son's first birthday party - my mum had to take her away when she started throwing toys at his little guests.
She managed to live alone for a couple more years, leaving my mother in agonies of guilt as to whether she should override my grandmother's fervent desire to remain independent for her own safety, or leave her be and let fate take its course.
Things came to a head early this year when my grandmother became ill and had to be hospitalised. She had developed a urinary infection and when she failed to recover properly she was eventually diagnosed with vascular dementia.
Since then my 89-year-old grandmother has been cooped up in a home whose chintzy normality would horrify her bohemian sensibilities. On a good day she sits in a circle of old ladies listening to piped classics of the Forties - this for a woman who would never knowingly listen to anything other than classical music or Radio 4.
On a bad day she looks up in terror at my mother, who she remembers only as a chubby toddler (if at all), looming over her as a wrinkled 63-year-old. When mum tells her who she is, all my grandmother can say is a fearful: "Oh my God."
She panics that her long dead parents will be worried where's she got to. She rushes around to "catch the coach back to Wales". She sees her dead husband sitting in the chair beside her. "He's right there, can't you see him?" she demands.
On a really bad day, Mum finds her naked and refusing to get dressed like an unruly toddler. On the worst day, she found my grandmother had washed her pathetically sparse grey hair in her used commode.
This is not my grandmother. This is not the beautiful, brave woman whose brilliance won her a ticket to a better life. This is not the teacher who inspired the most unteachable of pupils. This is not the grandmother who taught me to swim in icy Welsh seas, who sang on buses, smoked cigars and painted dreadful watercolours.
I want this woman, this impostor, who has forgotten how to be her and forgotten everyone who loved her, to stop defiling her memory and die. Does this make me inhuman?
I am not sure it doesn't make me more human than those who would insist on prolonging this half-life of hers.
Lorelai
Haga Parken-Fluturi, Haga Parken-Flori de pai
Gabisor face "salata", Gabisor in parc,
A inflorit iasomia, Alte albume foto
"Daca dragoste nu e... nimic nu e..."
cristiama spune:
Ma gandesc, cu ton de gluma cum ar fi sa-mi construiesc o casa, cu muuulte camere si:
- intr-o camera bunica care are Alzhaimer, nu ma mai recunoaste de 5-10 ani
- intr-alta bunica cealalta 88 de ani, senila
si doua camere in pregatire pt socrii, divortati:
- soacra-mea e deacum cam nebuna, 75 de ani si "nevorbita", rea, acra
- socra-miu o doar batran, pisalog, egoist
cum ar fi viata mea?
Poate unii pot impartii povara, parintii mei insa au murit si sotul e singur la parinti.
E egoist ca eu VREU sa traiesc, ca vreau sa am zile in care sa nu ma sune de 5 ori femeia care vede de bunica nr. 1, in care sa nu-mi pese de a 15-a boala a soacra-mii, ca a 3-a oara cand socrul isi rupe piciorul, sta in alta localitate, nu vreau sa-mi petrec weekendul in masina si spital!!!!!!
Si da, platesc o femeie sa vada de bunica nr. 1, imi invit soacra la masa duminica, imi vizitez socru de 3-4 ori pe an DAR nu vreau sa traiesc cu ei!!!!!
escu spune:
Cred ca este o problema de mentalitate a seniorului. Batranetea nu iarta pe nimeni si toti vom ajunge acolo. Ideea este sa ne dorim sa ramanem in mediul nostru, printre oameni de varsta noastra si sa ne simtim bine asa. Sa ne bucuram de fiecare zi. Sa nu ne dorim nepotii in jurul nostru, decat la evenimente. Sa nu ne atarnam ca o piatra de piciorul lor, sa-i lasam sa evolueze fara sa-i infranam. Este greu, foarte greu. Dar toata viata facem totul spre binele copiilor nostri, nu trebuie sa cedam niciodata. Sigur ca daca parintii vor ii luam cu noi la batranete. Eu asa am facut. Mi-ar fi fost greu sa-i las, dar mi-ar fi fost mult mai bine daca ei nu si-ar fi dorit. Daca si-ar fi gasit un echilibru printre persoanele de varsta lor. Oricum am invatat ceva pentru viitor. Am sa-mi caut si am sa-mi gasesc un echilibru in casa mea pana in ultima zi de viata. Nu am sa incarc constiinta copiilor mei cu batranetea mea ci am sa-i conving ca sunt fericita in mediul meu.
Trebuie sa invatam sa imbatranim frumos. Numai asa vom fi o amintire frumoasa pentru ei.
Asadar..... cine se inscrie la clubul meu de canasta peste 30-40 de ani? 
cl spune:
quote:
Originally posted by escu
... Am sa-mi caut si am sa-mi gasesc un echilibru in casa mea pana in ultima zi de viata. Nu am sa incarc constiinta copiilor mei cu batranetea mea ci am sa-i conving ca sunt fericita in mediul meu.
Trebuie sa invatam sa imbatranim frumos. Numai asa vom fi o amintire frumoasa pentru ei.
Asadar..... cine se inscrie la clubul meu de canasta peste 30-40 de ani?
Eu, eu, ma primesti?
Exact asa vad si eu lucrurile. Nu vreau ca al meu copil sa nu aiba viata lui. Va avea si el copiii lui si va avea problemele lui, grijile lui. Nu vreau sa-i fiu povara.
Curiozitatea m-a facut sa dau o cautare dupa camine/azile de batrani (uh, ce urat suna cuvantul azil!). Ei bine, m-am uitat la cele particulare (cele de stat, ma scuzati, e foarte posibil sa nu fie asa, dar mi se par lagare de exterminare...) si nu mi-a venit sa cred: 1 mil/zi (fara oferte suplimentare
!!!!). Asta inseamna 30 mil de luna!!!! Cam mult! Am mai avut curiozitatea sa mai intru si pe site-ul altuia si nu am gasit nici un pret, nimic, dar, stupoare, am gasit o remarca de genul: "pretul? contactati-ne...si nu uitati ca fiecare batran dispune de un apartament care poate fi inchiriat cu cel putin 200 de euro...". Uhhh!!!! Mi-e groaza sa ma gandesc la ce tarife practica.Din pacate, lucrurile, pe la noi, nu stau prea bine in ceea ce priveste protectia batranilor.
elyda spune:
escu...
deci nu sunt singura care nu vrea(pentru ca ii iubeste) sa devina o povara pentru copii si nepoti vreau sa raman bunica lor si sa ne bucuram de clipele petrecute impreuna ,nu sa stau legata de gatul lor ca piatra de moara.
dana
A_Iulia spune:
Mie mi se pare inuman sa ai pretentia sa-ti ramana mostenire apartamentul batranului, dar sa-l lasi sa moara de boala, foame si singuratate cat mai repede.
Am dat si eu de curiozitate un google, am gasit si cu 50 RON/zi, nu in Bucuresti, dar foarte civilizat si modern, inclus 24/24, cazare, 3 mese+supliment la pat daca este nevoie, asistenta personala si supraveghere non-stop, igiena corporala, asistenta medicala, au program zilnic, curte mare, balansoar etc.
Deci, bine ca incep si la noi sa apara solutii.
Sigur ca sunt dificili, mai ales cand vreo boala le afecteaza creierul, insa asta nu inseamna ca ar trebui sa nu ne pese deloc de ei, daca au ce manca sau nu, daca se simt bine sau nu...
Adina + Olivia Q1.04
Guestus spune:
Daca ai 1 apartament la 70 ani il vinzi si te muti cu alti mosi la casa de batrini. Care e problema? Asta e viata..fiecare dupa puteri... unul ca mine o sa se cazeze la 5 stele cu 3 milioane/zi cu stewardesa la pat si altii or sa stea la aia publica cu o uriciune in ultimele momente. 
...
mamaruta spune:
quote:
Originally posted by elyda
escu...
dana
Tu-ti imaginezi ca exista un singur batran care sa nu-si iubeasca copii(nepotii) si sa devina constient o povara pentru ei??
irina.c. spune:
quote:poate mai credeam si eu vorba asta pana ca bunica mea sa locuiasca cu noi.Au fost 7 ani foarte grei, in special ultimii.A murit in august, Dumnezeu s-o ierte, dupa cateva luni in care se senilizase cu totul,iar in final a cazut si la pat.Dar poate nu asta ar fi fost problema, ci exact cum spune Maria- batranii pot fi foarte rai, nimic nu-i multumeste, nimic nu e bun, etc..Bunica mea a fost o femeie foarte dificila si in tinerete, iar batranetea a accentuat trasaturile neplacute de caracter.Cine n-a stat cu un batran in casa nu intelege cat de greu e.Din povestea asta am ramas cu o concluzie:fiecare la casa lui, e cel mai bine pentru sanatatea mentala si sufleteasca a tuturor.
Originally posted by mariamunteanu
Multi batrani sunt foarte, dar foarte dificili. Vor sa fie ajutati dar numai cum si cand vor ei, nu sunt niciodata multumiti, niciodata nu gatesti destul de bine, nu faci curat destul de temeinic, nu faci destul cat ar merita, nu ai voie sa pleci nicaieri etc.
Imi vine greu s-o spun pt. ca mi-am iubit nespus de mult bunica, dar ani la rand a fost un calvar pt parintii mei. De fapt ambele bunici sunt artagoase, certarete, dificile, suspicioase (de ex. femeile care vin la curatenie n-a fost nici una acceptata pe motive inchipuite ca: fura, bea, se uita la televizor, asteapta de mancare, n-a facut exact cum i s-a spus, a cumparat din piata lucruri prea scumpe/rele/putine/multe etc). Orice are fi facut parintii mei de 60 de ani, niciodata nu era bine. Nici o apreciere, nici o multumire, nici o vorba buna ...
E gresita vorba "cine nu are batrani sa-i cumpere". Sunt si oameni buni printre ei, dar e tare greu ... pacat.
Irina, mami de
bb Ilinca(26 aprilie '04) si debb Teodora(26 august 2007) am blog
linasobolina spune:
Ce am inteles eu din ce povestiti voi: ca aveti dreptul la viata, ca va iubiti batranii, insa ei ar trebui sa se gandeasca ca au avut o viata, pe care au trait-o, si pentru binele copiilor ar trebui sa-si schimbe putin mentalitatea, sa nu cada pe capul lor
Mai inteleg insa, ca ati face orice pentru binele si linistea batranilor.
INSA PANA LA UN PUNCT: BANII!!!!!
Asta v-o spun eu, ca vad zilnic aceasta tragedie.
Vreau ca batranul sa fie ingrijit, insa atatia bani????
Pai sa va fac un calcul simplu, pentru cineva imobilizat
Are nevoie de asistenta 24/24, deci ii trebuiesc 2 femei/zi care cer cel putin 10mil/luna, deci s-au facut de 20 milioane?
Sau iei una interna si o platesti in cel mai fericit caz cu 12-15 mil/luna, pentru ca nu are nici zi nici noapte, ca bolnavul vrea pipi, papa, apa, deci nu dormi, il supravehezi sau te trezesti de 15 ori pe noapte.
La banii atia adaugo masa si casa, si iata s-au mai adunat sa zic 5-6 mil/luna, fara necesitatile bolnavului, ca si alimentatie, pampers...
Nu vorbim de medicatie.
Si daca tragi linie, ajungi la cei 30 mil/luna, adk 1 mil/zi.
Deci libertatea de a nu sta si ingriji un batran=bolnav, COSTA.
Si atunci te intrebi, cine are acesti bani?
Cati isi permit si chiar VOR sa ia de la gura copilului, care este al nostru si reprezinta viitorul, pentru un batran care este DOAR al unuia, e mama TA sau bunicul TAU?
Vad zilnic cum vin familii care vor sa ia pe cineva pentru ingrijire batrani dar bugetul alocat este la jumate decat cel pentru bona, in conditiile in care a avea grija de un bolnav este mult mai solicitant si fizic si psihuc.
POATE DE ACEEA NU SE FAC ACELE CAMINE/AZILE/ NURSING HOUSE/PENTRU BATRANI.
Pentrru ca si daca ar fi , familiile nu ar plati, ori ca nu au, ori ca nu vor.
Daca aceasta solutie ar fi fost o afacere, am fi avut zeci de astfel de locatii, pentru binele tuturor si al familiilor si al batranilor si al investitorilor.