Just "Forget About It" I'm Told; Move On With "Your" Life

Mom's gone. My husband is gone.
Start to live again, I'm told. You "deserve" a life.

My life is served and is service in many ways. 

Do we tell someone who's lost a loved one to Cancer to stop speaking out? 

How about saying to someone who has Multiple Sclerosis not to Walk for MS or talk about the "disease".

Yet some have said "It's over now, get on with your own life."

Others say, "You can't do anything different. What happened, happened."

I am the voice of those who have passed, of those who can no longer speak. 

If I am silent, their passing would be in vain and others would suffer the same mistreatment, the same disconcern and more would live as we do with questions, concerns and feelings of "If only I had known more ..... If only someone would have... 

People seem to not want to talk about Dementia. They're willing to talk more "in this day and age" about Alzheimer's, the Association for the disease has made this one part of Dementia more "palatable" and more "acceptable" because the name doesn't detail as directly the fact the disease is MENTAL.

MENTAL CHALLENGES ARE STILL VERY FORBIDDEN AREAS OF DISCUSSION.

My husband also had mental processing challenges due to the administration of several drugs.  DEMENTIA LIKE BEHAVIOURS AREN'T LIMITED TO AN AGE.

Down's Syndrome. Multiple Sclerosis. Concussion. Brain Damage due to accident or birth related.

Mental Health is often thought of as either being a grave illness, a birth defect or an accident of life. 

Mental Health management to most medical practitioners means use drugs to alter or control.

Visiting our friend in Mom's previous "home", her Long Term Care, I overheard a woman who was leaving the facility talking about her husband.

She said how "good" he was when she arrived. Then, she said, he ate and his "behaviour" became difficult. She said "THEY" were going to have to do something about that; give him something to change the way he was.

DRUGS. GIVE HIM MORE DRUGS. Alter his behaviour to reflect what "she" felt comfortable with. 

He was expressing feeling, need or concern. It was not in a way "she" found acceptable. A wife like many medical professionals. 

The husband could have a reaction to meds he's being given.

The husband could have unfulfilled needs -- for all she knows, he might have had a bladder or bowel release and was uncomfortable but his declining mind could only interpret it through anger, hostility or negative action.

PARENTS WHO PUNISH THEIR CHILDREN FOR WORDS OR ACTIONS INSTEAD OF TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE BASIS FOR WHAT IS BEING DONE REACT IN THE SAME WAY AS PHYSICIANS, CARE GIVERS AND RELATIVES life this wife.

TODAY'S COMMON REACTION TO CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY IS to drug them.  It's not new, it's been going on for decades.

Make them docile. End the behaviour through the simple swallowing of a compound that may be an underlying cause of the behaviour.

How many drugs haven't we found that once were thought to cure or to a problem cause severe reactions, complications that are worse than the problem or even DEATH.

Remember Thalidomide?

Today's latest "miracle drug" is tomorrow's lawsuit in progress.

We don't consider "aging" to move from being an infant through to an adult, but it is.

We don't consider "aging" as a negative and something to want to turn away from or fear until we start to listen to the voices chanting the mantra of AGEISM.

Listen carefully to what is said around you, to the voices crying out and the whispers that surround -- see the change, the rotation, the movement from those who "have been" to those who "are becoming".

And so I write and I say:

Who are you to close your eyes and ears and not see and hear what is so obvious. 

Watch and listen closely. Open your eyes, your mind and your heart.

Look beneath, beyond and read between the lines. 

We do not age as one, we age as a society and we grow older with one another -- if we are wise, that is.