I gave a presentation for work the other day on aging and disability. Not that I’m particularly old, but there are only a couple people in the office who could have taken my place and I happen to fit the criteria the best. Besides, I can see 40 on the horizon, so while I don’t consider myself “old”, I’m not in my twenties either and my body tells me so quite often. But I wanted to talk about not physical but social changes that come with disability.
In particular I’m thinking of my last Power Point slide (yes, we still use it) about stereotypes. I’d been thinking about the merging stereotypes of disability and the elderly, and how they can magnify and play off of one another as we age.
One way this comes in to play is financially. When it comes to disability, my friend says that we have a “scarlet dollar sign on our foreheads”. When TPTB see us coming down the sidewalk, they see a big dollar sign; not because we make money, but because accessibility costs money to provide. And it’s true; I’ve worked in our deaf services department for over a year and a half now and I’ve started to do the budgeting. Let’s just say I temporarily thought it might be good for me to leave my current career to become a sign language interpreter. People who are elderly often need extra services as well; disability services and elder care often overlap. So, imagine how aging with a disability might increase the different ways in which people are looked at with dread. Imagine how this perception, this vibe, this energy is absorbed by those it is directed at and then transforms into this seemingly free-floating sense of being a burden.
Which brings me to euthanasia. I, personally, am not against it, but I wish I could be. No, scratch that. I wish that the attitudes that create the feeling of one being a burden did not exist. I feel that to my last breath, no matter how people feel about disability and the elderly, I will defend my right to take my own life. For me it is simply the ultimate freedom, and I need the specter of it as a coping mechanism as well. But damn, this is one of those issues where I’m almost on the fence about it, especially when the economy is sour.
Another area where elderly and disability stereotypes come crashing into each other is sexuality. The elderly and the disabled both suffer under the same stereotype of asexuality. While it is true that there may be asexuals amongst us, they are certainly nowhere near the majority of us. Let’s cut any flowery language, here: people think of old people and disabled people having sex as being gross. And funny! Well, I used to think it was funny, now I’m looking for a little something extra in my comedy.
We discriminate against that which is distasteful to us. While this reaction to distaste (of anything) may be an instinctual feeling that cannot be legislated away, we can certainly use our higher human brains to realize that what we think of someone's sex life should not matter in how we think of them as a person (as many have realized regarding homosexuality), and really does not matter much in the long run so as we don’t use those feelings as an excuse to discriminate.
The final stereotype I wanted to mention is the one of uselessness. America has such a mythos of physical prowess: the pioneer man, the Paul Bunyans and the Davey Crocketts; railroad building; and football all come cherry-picked out of my brain. Once we lose our physical prowess we are done, so the thinking goes. If I had to have someone wipe me, I’d shoot myself, so think thinking goes. If I couldn’t walk anymore I roll off a cliff, so the thinking goes.
Whatever happened to using your brain? Well, we do have the image of the supercrips, the Stephen Hawkings, the Helen Kellers, the X-men (or whoever) paralyzed geniuses. But I’m talking about normal people, non-geniuses, non-heroes. Why do we see them as having nothing to contribute? Can’t someone continue to be a worthy human by simply being, well, human?
It reminds me of a story that someone wrote in a creative writing class I took. It was about his wife, and what he loved about her. Rather, it was about how if she lost all these characteristics he loved one by one, he would still love her. And when her mind went? When she could no longer recognize him or remember her own name? He would still love her. And if that were true, then what, exactly, was it about her that he loved? What was it about her that would still call to his heart every morning upon awakening?
When we have people in our society who can no longer recognize us, or move the way they used to, what is it about them that we still love? And is that something not worthy of life? Is that something not the very essence of life and of loving another?
As I age I realize that I may begin to lose more than I already have due to paralysis. I have learned to accept not walking; how will I accept not remembering, not being able to recall my friends names? And will I feel the burden of losing these abilities? I’ve already had to deal with feeling the burden of not walking; what of the burden of not thinking like I used to? The women in my family tend to live to old age, so I will likely experience some level of dementia.
I wish I had time during my presentation to get into it like this, because it’s so personal to me. But that is one reason I have this journal here; so I can get in depth with things that are personal to me, and not have an audience that says “TL:DR” or “yawn”. So, thank you for being here.
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