There's been a lot in the press recently about the worrying costs of care in old age; how because we're all living longer we all need to make provisions for what will happen when we retire or fall ill (which in the way it's constantly put, seems inevitable for all of us).
I've got a couple of friends who have mentioned the fact that they'd like to have kids pretty soon; in the words of one "so I'll have someone around to take care of me when I get older". When I first heard that I thought it sounded selfish, but since I've given it a bit more thought I can understand the sentiments behind a statement like that. While there are about a million and one different reasons for having children, I wonder how many people are actually that honest about that being a major reason why they'd decide to take the plunge.
Not that it's a very practical reason; not now, not when people are encouraged to travel and emigrate and they're encouraged to spout off at every opportunity about why they hate their parents and didn't get the cherished upbringing they felt they deserved. Hell, I'm one of them!
Only joking. Well, sort of.
A few years ago, before I started my own business, I took on some office temping assignments while I tried to work out what the hell I was going to do with my life. One of these assignments took me to a care home for the elderly, at which I was to help them sort out their administrative processes and get their personnel systems into something resembling order. Well within my limited capabilities, so I agreed a start date for work.
I hadn't thought much about where I was actually working; all offices look exactly the same to me - which was why I was so keen to get out of them. I'd been a temp for about six months, so I was used to turning up, blending in and just blandly getting on with the job (and discovering how invisible temps actually are; you'd be amazed what people will say in front of you about the company, or the boss, or what director's going to be sacked next week and escorted from the building by security. MI5 were missing a trick - if they wanted to get some special secrets from the Russians all they really needed to do was send someone in as a temp to work at the embassy, and within days they'd be pretty much sorted).
The care home was one of the strangest places I'd ever worked. I was stuck in a tiny little corner office on my own, in which for some inexplicable reason were stacked (clean, thankfully!) cat litter trays to use for filing. I'd come in, and while I was filing papers and checking tedious detail I'd hear refrains of 'The Jeremy Kyle Show' from the residents' lounge next door. I'm not sure Jeremy was the best entertainment for infirm elderly people, but in hindsight he's on straight after Lorraine Kelly and I'm not sure if anyone knew how to change the channel, or indeed if they were even watching the telly in the first place. Or there'd be strains of Vera Lynn and Doris Day instead. Or - somewhat bizarrely - 'Knees Up Mother Brown'. All very jolly.
Except it wasn't really; it was eerie, mainly because those sounds were the only ones I'd hear all day. I hardly saw and never heard anything from the residents, save from one poor old lady who was always dressed in exactly the same dress and cardigan, wandering the halls, trying to open the locked doors and plaintively asking her Mum to "come and save me...I'm scared" Her routine; her well-worn route around the home; her shaky, pleading voice asking to be "saved", was exactly the same every day.
I could have asked the people I was working with about her; if anybody visited, if she had any family, or what was wrong with her, or I could have tried to talk to her myself. But I didn't do any of that, because I was scared, too. Scared of the sad story I would inevitably end up hearing. So I just got on with my filing and kept my head down, feeling spectacularly sad and guilty, until I finished my three-month assignment.
And that is why I believe the people who actually work caring for the elderly are special...certainly worth their weight in gold. The good ones are, anyway, like my little sister and some of the people I met during my temping assignment in the home. It's a job I couldn't do in a million years, mainly because I'd end up taking it home with me. I'd let a job like that turn me into a snivelling wreck; of no use to anyone because ultimately I'd just be thinking too much and feeling too sorry for myself to do the best job for the people who needed me. I don't think I'm alone in thinking this way; that's why jobs like that are a genuine vocation and the people who do them well should be paid handsomely - by all of us - and cared for like precious jewellery.
In my ultimately worthless opinion, anyway.
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