That, is the question, facing us, and the older generations right now, isn’t it??? From the Front Page Section, translated…
After my father passed, my mother wanted to live alone in their home, there was no neighbors around, my mother has histories of diabetes, hypertension, if something were to happen, there’s, no place she can go to get help, how could we, feel at ease, leaving her all alone? In our begging her, she’d finally, agreed, to move in with my youngest brother.
During the daytime, my youngest sister-in-law goes to work, she’s left at home alone, didn’t know how to pass her time, there’s, nobody she could talk to, she’d, kept watch over the empty house, she’d, lost the focus in her own life, and, it’d, accumulated by the day, to the point she was, diagnosed with depression, and, she was also, diagnosed with Parkinson’s too, this became, one of our biggest hidden worries.
The home was built with bamboo fences, a traditional, farming small village, inside the old-styled mansions, there were, elderlies of eighty, ninety year-olds, the neighbors are, all relatives, they’d cared for one another. My mother-in-law, my great aunt, grandpa and grandma who all lived there, circled around that old sycamore, chit chatting, telling and retelling the stories of old, never ending, their lives, are filled, with that country living leisure.
The elderly are all the same, in the countryside, or in the cities, the previous generations of parents all refused to enter into assisted living, and, there’s, an assortment of negativity that came with sending one’s own parents into nursing home, and so, mostly, the elders in Taiwan chose to live with their children, or they’d, lived alone.
Taiwan had entered into the aging era now, and, there is, a rise in the population of economically independent, people who lived alone. The Yangming University’s Gerontology professor, Chen stated, that the surveys showed, that the elderly who lived alone, are in better health conditions than those who lived with their offspring, and, the elderly who are rotated between the children’s homes, have the worse health condition. In other words, if the elderly can live alone, it meant that they’re, settled, independent, and, healthier too.
There are, more cases of cocooning elderly deaths in Japan currently. The forefront of living alone, is that you don’t separate from the community, you need to be health, have the economic forefront, then, you can live alone, with ease, and comfort too.
And so, because it’s Chinese belief, that when an elderly goes into a nursing home, it automatically means, that they’re, uncared for in their elderly years, and that’s been the deep rooted belief that people here held, which is WRONG, because, in a nursing home, you get the opportunity, to socialize with people your age, and you get visits from your children, grandchildren regularly, while NOT imposing on them, so, assisted living, is not at all, a bad idea, if you look at it that way!
Life, the Obstacle Course 