Taking Care of Parents

[badabing]

Re: Taking Care of Parents

@garamasala

In my case I believe that my parents (fairly religious, ethnocentric immigrants) would have a much more difficult time integrating into the culturally distinct environment of a nursing home in the US, which in my area would be run and occupied by mostly Christian, white folks. Some of the activities such as ballroom dancing and poker night would not suit them and even the more posh nursing homes find it difficult to accommodate zabiha diets, have different standards of modesty, privacy, and cleanliness. Also, I find that older folks (just my personal observation) that are facing issues of dementia and Alzheimers tend to be much more comfortable using their native language even if they are/were very fluent in English. There is one nursing home in my area that is beginning to cater to a desi clientele (food, language) but the quality of care is horrible.

My community is ill-prepared to deal with aging of my parents generation, the large wave of immigrants that arrived in US in the 60s-70s. Many are living quite a bit longer than their parents and are encountering many more age-related diseases that require long-term care in a country where labor costs are orders of magnitude greater that their country of origin. My elderly grandparents had multiple round-the-clock live-in caregivers including paid servants to help them with all their personal hygiene needs. Since labor was cheap and the money was often coming in dollars from overseas children and therefore relatively abundant, the quality of care that my grandparents received was superb-better than previous generations. In addition the stay-at-home female relatives (most of the women didn’t work) would always be available to supervise the paid caregivers while providing comfort and company. My parents generation has this caregiving ideal that they want to have emulated for their care because they don’t have of any alternative picture of how aging is supposed to work, but they want it in the US. I’m not sure how the Canadian system works, but skilled care in the US is extremely expensive and quality care is hard to find (personal experience). Plus with many women working outside the home, the social aspect is missing, as the elder is home alone with a ‘stranger.’

To answer the OPs initial question, for one parent, I had to stop working for some time and juggled care with a sister who at times had to do the same. IA, the remaining elders will also be taken care of at home by family members with nursing care hired as needed, but I believe that this is far from ideal for both aging person and the child. The aging person would benefit from the social structure provided by a community of their peers with group activities like regular prayers, quran classes, watching dramas, mushairas, exercise, etc. When parents are at home and can no longer drive, they become isolated from the community. And as much as we tried to bring the community and family to them it was sporadic while a daily routine would be much better for them. And during the week, with jobs, school, activities, getting dinner on the table, it was a struggle to spend even an hour of quality time with them. They were always asking us to sit with them because they felt lonely and our inability to do so left us riddled with guilt even though that time was needed to make sure the laundry was done or foods that they were willing to eat were available to them.

We as a community need to develop nursing homes that can be sensitive to and accommodate the needs of the Muslim population. I would love to have a quality nursing home or assisted living community to go to if I needed it so that the full burden of my care would not fall on my children. I wouldn’t want my care to significantly hinder their careers or take away the precious time they should be investing in their own young families.

Agreed.