‘I am so frightened of this disease. Here I am in the prime of my life with so much to look forward to,’ the aunt of a friend of mine has just announced. It’s typical. She has never been frightened of anything in her life and she will be one hundred and two years old in September. She made the announcement to her carer. She is also, typically, perfectly ready to die. That’s the way to do it.
When I was first working in Singapore a wonderful elderly Chinese parishioner, Mrs Lim Wah Aun took me to Sago Lane. Sago Lane was a street of undertakers, coffin makers, shops which sold funeral garments, joss sticks, paper houses, clothes, cars everything you needed for a funeral. Mrs Lim pointed out the coffins which looked like wonderful wooden boats and, she said, I should never write or sign my name with red ink as, I think, the names on coffins were always written in red or certainly something to do with death was always written in red. I still don’t like to use red ink to sign anything.
Also in Sago Lane were Death Houses. These were houses where poorer families would bring elderly relatives to die knowing that there they would receive all the care and the rituals in preparation for death and after death which they couldn’t afford to give them at home. The rooms were very simple with wooden planks for beds. Those who were there and could understand knew why they were there. Sago Lane was not strange or a street of fear. It was a street of shophouses where families lived above or behind the shops. The Death Houses were also shop houses with families living alongside and caring for the dying. I’ve no doubt some were better than others.
In the 1960’s I gather there was a lot of adverse international publicity about the Death Houses and they were officially closed down. They certainly still existed in the 70s and it was not until the 1980’s that the final residents of Sago Lane were moved out. The last I heard was that it is now a car park. To the best of my knowledge, during my time in Singapore, there was only one home for the elderly and it was a very simple affair in the Tampines Road. The residents were all people who had no families at all.
When I was at Christ Church, Chelsea there was an afternoon club that met once a month. There were visiting speakers one of whom was Dame Cicely Saunders who began St Christopher’s Hospice and who was a prime mover in the whole hospice movement.
Of course Hospices are different from what are now called Care Homes. Hospices are specifically for the dying. In Care Homes in the United Kingdom the average life expectancy is two years. Care Homes used to be called Old People’s Homes, then, Homes for the Elderly, or, when I was at St Mary Abbotts in Kensington, there was a home for Distressed Gentlefolk. It was founded by Elizabeth Finn in 1897 as the Distressed Gentlefolks Aid Association and changed its name in 1999 to Elizabeth Finn Trust. The home backed onto the parish hall. The charity sold that valuable property and the charity is now run by something called Turn2us.
With deaths from contracting Covid 19 being high among the elderly, Care Homes are very much in the news. Some relatives of those in homes and managers of the homes themselves have been outspoken about the spread of the disease in Care Homes. Without doubt there are some families who care very much for their relatives who they have to put into a home. Sometimes it is because the elderly family member needs more, and more specialised, care than they can give at home. Without doubt too the staff at most care homes care very much for the residents.
However there are a lot of people in Care Homes because the way our society has evolved is that many of us don’t care. Many of us expect someone else to care. And that someone else should pay for their care. Probably the government, whoever that is. When I visited Angela, a good friend who had no close family and who was old and had dementia, in a Care Home, I was told by the staff that most of the residents had no visitors at all.
Strange as it may seem I do believe that most of us over the age of seventy know that one day we will die. We know it. We may not want it to happen tomorrow. We probably go along with Woody Allen who said, ‘I don’t mind the least about dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens’. But I suspect that it’s not us but our families who have the problem with our dying of Covid 19 while in a Care Home. We have to die of something.
Old age is not for sissies. When my mother was 97 she told me that it took her until about eleven o’clock in the morning to feel positive about the rest of the day.
‘It’s a real effort,’ she said, and added, ‘I suppose it is possible that one day I will die.’
To which I replied, ‘Mother, I think it’s safe to say it is probable.’
‘There’s no need to be smart,’ she said.