A community, like Yarmouth, like Cape
Cod in general, with a larger percentage of elderly residents than the
statewide or nationwide average will suffer severe consequences. Especially if
they live alone. The real tragedy isn’t that the elderly are terrible drivers
famous for hitting the gas in front of hair salons or tattoo parlors and
crashing through the front windows. It’s not the left hand turn signal that
never goes out no matter which direction they are travelling. No, it is even
more serious than that.
Old folks, and we have twice as many as
the rest of the state as a percentage of our total population, eventually stop
shopping and going out to eat. They get Meals on Wheels. The only workers they
require are minimum wage home health aides and grass cutters. They require
serious health care assistance and more drug stores per capita than casinos in
Las Vegas. They stop making any contribution to the local economy. They start
to drag it down.
And they vote, against everything.
School funding can’t be improved, town infrastructure maintained, new projects,
like sewers or mixed housing developments, can’t get started. After town
meeting or voting they gather on the sidewalk bumping into each other’s walkers
and wondering out loud where they are and commenting to each other about the
high taxes keeping them from going to Foxwoods more than twice a month. They
won’t sell their retirement homes and simply stop maintaining them instead. The
grass grows up and the trim paint peels off. Property values in the neighborhood
decline but they don’t care because they can’t see the messy pile they live in for
what it really is.
That cheap wooden ramp up to the front
door is always an attractive feature. The general thought today is that moving
in with one of the children and perhaps the grandchildren would be a big
negative for everybody.
And that may be true if you are as cranky,
depressed and unpleasant to everyone as many of these folks are. That’s perhaps
why no one comes to visit any more. It’s not just that “everyone is dead” as you
like to say, it’s more that you have grown into an old asshole.
My grandmother Callery came to live with
us when her husband died and we were little children. She cooked and cleaned,
made pleasant conversation with the parents, watched the children and contributed
to the family. Because she had worked before Social Security she had no income
of her own. Now, I’m not suggesting making old people dependents of their
families but I can’t help but think that many elderly would actually feel
better and have a better outlook if they were part of an extended family on a
regular basis.
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Be kind. I'm so old a snide comment might be the end of me!