Tag: elders

Taking a forced break from my normal life of hanging out with babies and their parents, I’ve recently chalked up some personal experience being helpless, thanks to the need for some major orthopedic surgery. My recuperative slow-down has given me time to think about my attitude toward dependency. Unlike babies and other people with limited ability to meet their own needs, I had only a day or two of total helplessness, when I couldn’t walk on my own and needed help getting to the bathroom, and to be brought food, drink and medicine. While I like to think it would be my honor to help someone else in my state, I have noticed myself being frustrated and a little embarrassed to need so much help. Why is it so uncomfortable to be dependent?

When Elizabeth Kennedy’s 84-year-old father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two years ago, she removed the car keys from his Johnstown, Pennsylvania home and his Volkswagen Passat from the driveway. Despite warnings from his four children and his doctor, any opportunity to get behind the wheel would have proven too tempting for Kennedy’s newly widowed dad.

"He was convinced he was a perfectly good driver, and he took it like he was being attacked," she said. "My father didn’t understand why we told him he couldn’t drive anymore."