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from the explain-the-sound-of-one-hand dept.
With no families or visitors to speak of, many older tenants spent weeks or months cocooned in their small apartments, offering little hint of their existence to the world outside their doors. And each year, some of them died without anyone knowing, only to be discovered after their neighbors caught the smell.
The first time it happened, or at least the first time it drew national attention, the corpse of a 69-year-old man living near Mrs. Ito had been lying on the floor for three years, without anyone noticing his absence. His monthly rent and utilities had been withdrawn automatically from his bank account. Finally, after his savings were depleted in 2000, the authorities came to the apartment and found his skeleton near the kitchen, its flesh picked clean by maggots and beetles, just a few feet away from his next-door neighbors.
The huge government apartment complex where Mrs. Ito has lived for nearly 60 years — one of the biggest in Japan, a monument to the nation's postwar baby boom and aspirations for a modern, American way of life — suddenly became known for something else entirely: the "lonely deaths" of the world's most rapidly aging society.
To many residents in Mrs. Ito's complex, the deaths were the natural and frightening conclusion of Japan's journey since the 1960s. A single-minded focus on economic growth, followed by painful economic stagnation over the past generation, had frayed families and communities, leaving them trapped in a demographic crucible of increasing age and declining births. The extreme isolation of elderly Japanese is so common that an entire industry has emerged around it, specializing in cleaning out apartments where decomposing remains are found.
Compounding matters, Japan has a declining birthrate and bans immigration.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Gaaark on Sunday December 03 2017, @10:22PM (16 children)
When my wife's grandmother was on her own, they set up a system where they called her every day and visited her a lot. That way they knew if something happened to her.
Twice, they'd found she'd fallen and couldn't get up (cue the lol).
They knew when she'd eaten or hadn't and knew when she was sick.
We will do the same with our parents as soon as it looks like it is necessary.
Come on people...wtf?!?!? They raise you and you then say fuck you? (Although, I did have decent parents, YMMV).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Informative) by Grishnakh on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:26PM (3 children)
Come on people...wtf?!?!? They raise you and you then say fuck you? (Although, I did have decent parents, YMMV).
Different people have different circumstances. Some people have a poor relationship with their parents, perhaps because they were abused, or their parents try to use them. Other people just don't live anywhere near their parents; work can take you far away, and in that case the parents should be thinking about moving closer to some of their kids, not the other way around (the kids are the ones who need to worry about where the jobs are; the parents are retired and don't have this problem). Many times, the parents just refuse to move, and that's on them, not the kids.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @03:28AM
Another factor to consider (one we are facing). Grandma and Grandpa may well have already paid their house off, and the kids live in a much more expensive area. In order to move nearer our kids, we'd have to sell our house (which is paid off) and buy a new house that would cost at least 250K more for equivalent housing.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 04 2017, @03:56AM (1 child)
I get the poor relationship thing and that you may just cut contact.
But if not, a phone call even once a week? Once a month? Just to say "hey, you still alive?"
Even if you live on the other side of the world....email anyone?
Anyone who has kids and isn't Joseph Mengeles should get at least a yearly butt fuck!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @02:27PM
Yearly? What? What did I just read?!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Sulla on Monday December 04 2017, @02:00AM (2 children)
I am currently in the process of having my grandmother sent to a retirement home. My wife and I have been caretaking for four years as she went from being an able person to having her brain destroyed by alzheimers. She has become mean and threatens violent acts on occasion, calls my wife a terrible mother over minor infractions and has told other family members that I should divorce her.
It is awful sending someone to a home, and it is not an easy thing to cut someone out of your life, but you get to a point where you can't handle it anymore. There are those people who don't even try and just write-off family and I think that is wrong, but people have their reasons. Before I went through this I never would have been able to understand a person doing this to a family member.
I live in an assisted suicide state, I will make sure I am dead before I cause a drain on the family unit.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @12:13PM (1 child)
What worries me is that if I do get dementia, that person (with my appearance and my name) may not think that suicide is necessary, and the dementia will evolve to the point of causing serious pain to my family even if right now I can rationally decide that dementia is a good reason for suicide.
But this is not a solvable problem... People in my family died from cancer and heart disease, I don't know a lot about dementia, but I assume the passage from "person" to "mindless something that gets angry" is very subtle, and there is no easy way to decide when it is irreversible.
For instance Terry Pratchett had Alzheimer's, and he died in his bed, apparently still quite aware of who and where he was.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sulla on Monday December 04 2017, @04:40PM
My grandmother had a slow decline and then two months ago fell off a cliff. Doesn't recognize people around her, getting violent/making threats of violence, can't figure out how to look outside to tell if its day or night, can't comprehend the date when the reads the paper.
This whole thing has made me really consider various ways to self-verify for the purposes of suicide. Very frightful.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @03:25AM (1 child)
A lot of folks do this with someone to whom they aren't even related.
The elderly person puts an object in the front window in the morning so that a neighbor can see it.
Remove it by 3PM so that it's clear that you're still ambulatory.
Use the other edge of the window for the next day.
The problem demonstrated in the example in TFS is that that person was a hermit and had no social contacts.
A casual once-a-week meeting of residents (coffee klatch; choir practice|performance; storytelling|bitching session; whatever) would be a good thing for the inhabitants of that complex to organize so that folks can get to meet each other.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 04 2017, @03:58AM
Absotutely posilickly.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 04 2017, @03:46AM
My grandparents' generation went overboard and cared for their parents in the home, retiring early to take on the job full time and then discovering that a 2:1 caregiver ratio still wasn't enough - they still had to call in outside help for the final years. After that experience, they vowed never to do such things to their children - well, 3/4 - my dad's mom took up 10 years of my brother's life caring for her.
My parents (boomers) seem to be on track to financially provide for themselves above medicare - my wife's parents (pre-boomers) not so much.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @05:29AM (1 child)
I wonder how the distribution (failed parents and failed children) of blame fits in these situations. What kind of kids would neglect their decent parents this way? What kind of decent parents would end up this way?
My parents were failures and they will die without some bullshit happy ending reunion from me. If they die with no one around to care, then it will be a result of the life that they lived.
My experience biases me, but I'd suspect that there are more failed parents than kids too selfish to care about decent parents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @03:51PM
I hear you, AC. Me too.
It's odd that I still miss my parents around the holidays. I just have to remember that my daddy believes that Yahweh is angry with the USA because black people aren't all slaves by birth, and he believes that it's the Jews' fault that he was a dipshit who didn't understand how investment works. Tricked me into getting a job 50 miles away and being dependent on him for transportation there so that he could evict me one morning for being gay out of the blue with no fucking way to keep that job. Spent a little while homeless.
Then they had the audacity to accept my brother's child into the family even though the child was born out of wedlock.
They may or may not die alone, but they can die however they want without me.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday December 04 2017, @02:19PM (2 children)
Not everyone has kids, and even if they do it's often just 1. With people living longer and generation span increasing you can get a situation where you have a 10 year old child, a pair of 40 year old working parents, 4 grandparents around 70ish, and a couple great-grandparents still around in their 90s.
That leaves the 2 working parents looking after the child and half a dozen retirees as well as both working full time.
On top of that, in today's world it's quite common for kids to be hundreds or thousands of miles away from at least one set of parents, which really hampers the "go and visit" part of your plan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @02:37PM
It's rather unlikely that all the old people require taking care of. My only grandparent with any issues could still take care of herself for the most part, because dementia caused her to forget what year it was and think I was my dad, it didn't physically disable her.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 04 2017, @06:41PM
I'm just saying a phone call even....
....the person doesn't answer the phone for a couple days, you could call the local cops/landlord/someone to check on them, so if they have fallen, they don't die from starvation or...
My wife's grandmother fell with her arms pinned beneath her chest (she'd tried to stop her fall). She would have died like that, pinned between the couch and the coffee table if there had been no one calling her to check on her.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @07:29PM
This is Japanese who *DON'T HAVE FAMILY*.
Many japanese families fell into decline after WW2. Some only had female children and either no siblings or siblings who in turn didn't have children, ending their bloodline. Some had children that didn't have children and preceded them in death (I know of at least one who was working stateside for his elderly mother's firm. Died of alcoholism.) Some never had children, either because they were working, the right person didn't come along, or they were impotent.
As a result japan has a dearth of young family members to take care of many of these older individuals. Combine that with their friends dying off a few at a time, or having to relocate away from them in order to afford rent and you have a bunch of isolated lonely older people who fall through the cracks.
The same thing happens in america and many other places, but thanks to Japan's relatively large population compared to its size, and the sheer quantity of old people since they didn't have the same post-war boom as the US and elsewhere, and you end up with the tfa discussed situation.