Scared to Death of Death: Facing More Than Gramma’s Mortality
When my family moved my grandma cross-country to a nearby nursing home, I had no idea she would bring with her a reminder of irrevocable loss.
And Gramma makes three.
Almost.
Over a year ago, my mother and father moved across the country to live with my husband and me. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was supposed to come with them. But Gramma fell and broke her hip just before the move. She has not recovered enough to continue being cared for at home, as she had been before the fall. This meant being left behind by my parents when they relocated, much to my mother’s despair. But finally, months after my parents arrived, we were able to bring Gramma here—just not in accordance with our original plans. Instead of moving her to the room designed for her in the little home my husband built for my parents, we moved her to a nursing facility.
Almost.
Over a year ago, my mother and father moved across the country to live with my husband and me. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, was supposed to come with them. But Gramma fell and broke her hip just before the move. She has not recovered enough to continue being cared for at home, as she had been before the fall. This meant being left behind by my parents when they relocated, much to my mother’s despair. But finally, months after my parents arrived, we were able to bring Gramma here—just not in accordance with our original plans. Instead of moving her to the room designed for her in the little home my husband built for my parents, we moved her to a nursing facility.
These events—waiting months for a space to open in the nursing home, followed by the nightmare of transporting across the country a frail 97-year-old woman in need of an airline-approved oxygen tank, an accompanying nurse, and proper identification documents (apparently, government agencies are not very sympathetic to the ways of the world a century ago, and those ways do not include the ubiquitous and standardized paperwork of today)—have given me a glimpse into recent headlines in my community predicting a shortage in services for the growing population of the elderly.
February 3, 2012Why the New Planned Parenthood Controversy Raises Old Questions
The world is waking up to a conflict pro-life women have faced for years.
If you’ve been paying attention to recent events involving Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen for the Cure, you probably have whiplash by now.
First, Komen—the world’s best-known breast-cancer-fighting organization—decided to stop giving funds to Planned Parenthood. Two reasons were given: Komen’s policy against supporting organizations under investigation, and the fact that PP does mammogram referrals rather than actual mammograms. Said Komen founder Nancy Brinker, “We have decided not to fund, wherever possible, pass-through grants. We were giving them money, they were sending women out for mammograms. What we would like to have are clinics where we can directly fund mammograms.”
That story was greeted with a storm of protest by the pro-choice movement, and loud cheers from pro-lifers. Many of these pro-lifers, who had long been deterred by the PP connection from giving to Komen, started opening their wallets and checkbooks for the organization for the first time.
Then, this morning, Komen released an apology. Their official statement read, in part: “Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. . . . We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.”
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