Let’s face it: growing old is a kak story. Take for example one old toppie who thinks he has it all planned out. At the age of seventy he sells up and moves into the Golden Years Retirement Village. (Doesn’t that name make you want to puke already?) A comfortable 2-bedroomed cottage with garage set in clipped lawns and pretty flower beds. No more sweating in the garden or hassling with home maintenance. There’s a gym and a pool, and he can eat at the Clubhouse, or drink at the bar with the other more sprightly residents. All quite pleasant and tolerable.
Then time, past bad habits and general wear and tear kick in and conspire to move things along a bit. Hypertension, the onset of Type 2 diabetes (he always was a bit of a pig), and maybe some mild emphysema to reward those years of smoking. To cap it all, his spouse goes and kicks the bucket and now he knows he really is on the downhill stretch.
Grief and loneliness sap his will, he spends more and more time in bed, and he neglects himself horribly. His daughter visits once a month but she’s got problems of her own – that bloody useless husband of hers has lost his job. (His other kids buggered off to greener pastures years ago.)
A handful of happy pills is added to all the other medication he’s taking every day, and the shrink gives him a pep talk four times a year. When he falls and breaks an arm, it’s time to make the next move. Assisted Living.
Assisted Living is a two-roomed unit in the main complex, which also accommodates the Frail Care Centre. Over a period of seven or eight years he goes through the three levels of Care – low, medium and high. At first he walks to the dining room, assisted by nothing more than a walking stick. But after several falls the trusty three-wheeled walking frame becomes an indispensable aid. Most of the day is spent dozing in front of the TV. Or shuffling up and down the windowless corridor. Only closed doors and the smell of cooked cabbage. And piss. He becomes incontinent and has to endure the indignity of wearing nappies. Talk about second childhood! Ballooning obesity is attributed to the side effects of psychiatric drugs, which have prevented him from committing suicide but left him an apathetic zombie. Again he falls and hits his head and ends up in hospital. Time for the penultimate move. Frail Care.
Down to one room. A hospital bed with cot sides, and a bell push if he feels like getting up. They wash or shower him, help him dress, clean his dentures. There’s a commode, so he doesn’t even have to make it to the toilet in the night. They shout at him politely and repeat everything four or five times because his hearing aid doesn’t work, and by now he’s gaga anyway, so it doesn’t matter whether he hears or not. It takes about three years for him to lose all that weight he put on and he is reduced to a skeleton draped in a sack of wrinkled hide. It’s time to go. One morning they find him staring at the ceiling and he’s cold to the touch. Like a toad. His final exit consists of a trolley ride down the passage to the back door, where the long limo stands waiting to take him off to the funeral parlour.
And after the memorial service they stand around looking relieved and quietly agree that it would have been better for all concerned if he had popped off ten years ago.
Yes, this old age business, as it stands now, is not something to look forward to, that’s for sure. Especially those last ten years. As it stands now, all we do is resign ourselves to the dreadful prospect as if we are powerless to do anything about it. Well, that might be about to change. Me and a couple of my buddies have come up with an alternative.
The other night, for some old fashioned male comradeship and a bit of intellectual stimulation, we got together over a litre of Bols and a goodly quantity of Coke, and started discussing the state of the world and the human condition and that kind of shit.
“Seven billion and counting,” Cupcake said.
“Too many humans,” the other guy said. “Just too many.”
I agreed but pointed out that the current economic model was based on infinite growth. Galloping consumption driven by an ever-growing population.
“That model is dead, man. Fucked. Like a …”
“It’s not an idea, man,” said Cupcake. “ It’s a piece of cerebral excrement.”
“But,” I objected, “How are you going to throw out the present model, discourage consumption, and shrink the population? I mean, for one thing, who’s going to look after all the old toppies?”
“Fuck the old toppies,” the other guy said.
“Euthanasia,” Cupcake said.
“You sound like a Nazi,” I said.
We had some more b and c and mulled things over in our minds, which were still pretty sharp.
“Hey man. I just got an idea!” Cupcake shouted with a real manic look on his face and in his eyes.
“Take it easy, your brain isn’t used to this,” the other guy said, trying to calm him down.
“No man, I’ve thought of a way to get rid of all the useless old parasites without running into any serious ethical bullshit.”
“Oh yeah?” I said.
“Yeah. What you do is this. You put all the oldies - as soon as they start vegetating and can’t look after themselves - on a daily dose of Smarties. Say three a day. The machine that dispenses them is programmed to include a certain percentage of lethal Smarties. Like cyanide, or something. They look identical to the regular ones, so nobody can cheat the system.”
“Sweet,” the other guy said. “ I get it. No one could be held responsible for administering the fatal dose.”
“It would be like playing Russian roulette every day,” I said, warming to the idea, which was beginning to strike me as incredibly audacious.
“Only, nobody would know about the game being played,” said Cupcake. “Both staff and patients would have to be kept in the dark about the program.”
We kicked the idea around some more; fine tuned it, and congratulated ourselves on having removed a major obstacle in the way of getting the aged down to manageable proportions.
“Think of all the suffering that will be prevented,’ said Cupcake, all smug and arrogant as if he was some kind of modern day messiah.
“This is genius stuff,” said the other guy. “Not only will millions of old people be spared the pain and humiliation of a long, slow goodbye, but think of us young people not having to waste all our time and resources looking after them.”
“And you know how depressing and psychologically and emotionally draining it is to have to watch some decrepit old bag of bones lying around senile and feeble and helpless, and so undignified and not even a trace of a shadow of their former selves?”
“Yah,” said Cupcake, looking kind of grim and serious. “It can depress the shit out of you having to deal with some old guy with dementia, especially if it’s a relative.”
“Don’t tell me,” said the other guy. “My gran had Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is the …’
“Alzheimer’s is an obscene insult, man,” said Cupcake. I mean, what the fuck use is Alzheimer’s? In terms of evolutionary biology? Tell me that.”
“No use,” said the other guy.
“But,” I said, deciding to set a cat among the pigeons. “Who are we to question God’s design for us?”
This proved a very witty thing to have said, because we then spent about five minutes pissing ourselves at the irony of it, and we then decided to call it a night and went off on our separate ways, still chuckling and in a really good mood.
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