Leaving your parents, to ROT away in pain, that’s not, filial piety, but, compared to leaving your elders in a nursing home, that’s, actually, very good in its, operations, it’s, a whole lot, better, right? Or, at least, that’s, how a lot of the, Asians in the world feels! Translated…
What does filial piety look like?
My aunts whose overly used phrases had been, “can’t pay our parents back for raising us”, insisted that only by physically serving, taking care of the elders, constitutes as fitting actions of filial piety, but, the taking turns in shifts, caring for the elders, caused a lot of stresses between the siblings in time, and energy. My father, the youngest of the family’s children mentioned that they can hire a foreign nurse to stay close by my grandparents’ side, that it would help them reduce the stresses a bit, but my aunts all rebutted, “if we let someone unknown care for our parents, then, we wouldn’t be, fitting as, children!”
this is, considered, “unfitting” for children to do to their parents…
Later on, one day, as grandpa was alone at home, he had an accidental trip and fall, then, my aunts’ objections to hiring a foreign nurse, started, loosening up. And yet, with my grandmother growing older, she’d started, losing the ability to take care of herself on her own, and, there’s, this lacking in manpower in the caretaking needs.
My aunt had originally wanted to pay the hired caretaker extra to have her help my grandmother out, to prepare the meals for her, to flip her over in bed, but in the end, it’d not, go through, due to how they didn’t agree on how much they need to pay the hired nurse. In the situation where nobody was there to prepare the easy to eat foods for grandmother, grandmother can only have the sweetened formulas as her meals, and her health started, deteriorating, and because nobody was there, to flip her over in bed, she’d started, getting, the bed sores too.
Seeing my grandmother’s cheeks becoming thinned down, losing the muscles that she used to chew the foods then swallow, her mandibles started become, apparently, along with the visible artery and vein on her neck, my father could no longer, accept it, and started, looking for the facilities to place my grandmother in. He’d visited several of the nursing homes personally, and finally found a 24-7 operation with nursing staff rotating the shifts, clean and open space, with the freshly cooked three meals a day, pureed into mush, and the home can get the workers to flip my grandmother over every two hours, giving her the tentative care she’d needed.
instead, they’d rather…
But, just as my father convinced my grandmother, my aunts, on the day grandma was moved in to the home, started persuading her to move back home, and they’d, even put on a fight at the undesignated time for visitors too, and the owner of the facility told my father, that it may not be fitting, for my grandmother to keep on, staying there.
Every time I saw my grandmother, so thin, I’d always sighed, that the justified claims of “can’t trust someone who’s not family”, turned into the caretakers’ and the elderly’s bondage. Actually, “letting strangers care for our loved ones”, isn’t it, an excuse, wrapped up, perfectly too? The unspoken reason may be, that my aunts’ unwillingness, to hire an extra caretaker, why would they be willing to pay for, the even higher amount in placing my grandmother in a fully operating nursing home?
Does filial piety only have one facet? When you can’t find the time, to care for your elders thoroughly, give them the attention they needed, but insisted on, not getting help externally, is that, really, fitting, to the, beliefs of, filial piety?
Of course not, but, this is happening all over the country right now, because the children refused to pay the top dollars, because they believe that having their parents under their watches, is the more secure way to care for them, as in this case, the aunts couldn’t even, manage to care for the grandmother of the writer well enough, but they’d, refused to place her into a well-rounded, nursing home, where there’s, around the clock care that the elderly is in need of, because of the beliefs of Asians’ that said, that placing our parents in a home, goes to show, just, how UNFITTING we are, as their, offspring! Think on it, if you can’t take good enough care of your own parents, and, the hired help couldn’t handle caring for your own elderly parents, leaving them be, how’s that, fitting, to the morale of, filial piety? It’s NOT!