A READER from Maryland writes:

A man I knew died recently under sad, but now common, circumstances. His large, senior-living facility closed its doors to all visitors, depriving him of the personal touch of his loved ones. Not only did the lockdowns prevent his relatives from traveling out-of-state to see him, his daughter and grandchildren who lived only a few miles away could not visit him daily, as they had been doing. Instead, they spoke with him every day on the telephone, and the only people he saw during his final weeks wore masks and gloves. Although the nurses and assistants might have been very kind to him, nonetheless, I would venture to say he died of loneliness.

I don’t believe that doctors foresaw the inhumanity of forbidding all visitors to patients in nursing homes and hospitals. An old woman from my church was not permitted to be in the hospital with her Corona-infected husband; he pined for her company, but the hospital forbade her to enter. Missing his wife and attended only by masked medical personnel, his illness was exacerbated, and eventually he was placed on a ventilator, dying shortly thereafter, alone. Similarly, my neighbor’s cousin died yesterday in a large, luxurious nursing home. Her sisters, cousins, and children, all of whom lived in the area, no longer came to visit and she could not understand why. She contracted the Coronavirus despite all the precautions. She stopped eating and eventually died, having not had a hug from a loved one in more than a month. Surely, the doctors and politicians could not have imagined that the social-distancing policies that were meant to be saving lives would also be hastening death.

In many plagues in history, at least one out of three people died in the plague year in many localities. [Editor: That would be about 100 million deaths in America today.] Nevertheless, people were permitted to gather together with fewer restrictions on work and worship than we have, and allowed and expected to care for their sick loved ones as we are not.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, “you and all of whom you love were already sentenced to death before the [Coronavirus came along], and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in very unpleasant ways …. If we are going to be destroyed [by a virus or recession] let that [disaster] find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts …”

So we struggle on in this beautiful world of ours. Eating less when food is scarce. Praying at home. Bringing cheer to our neighbors who are afraid or lonely or hysterical. Paying attention to the birds and trees and giving glory to God for all his gifts.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

Your correspondent is right to raise this issue. The tragedy of the elderly dying in nursing homes during the shutdowns is not of their dying per se, but of their dying of loneliness. The following is anecdotal, so take it for what it’s worth.

Ten years ago or more my crew and I did several repairs and bathroom remodels in a nursing home in Eufaula, OK. My recollection is that it took us somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six weeks to do the job, start-to-finish. During which time one of the managers of the facility (a woman) explained to me that she would be taking applications for nurses and other staff, and that if I knew anyone I thought qualified and looking for work, to send them her way. When I questioned why she would be taking so many applications for so many open positions, she replied that the women who staff(ed) those positions were soon to receive their tax rebate checks, and that, as such, prior years’ experience had taught her that they would soon quit en masse to live off those checks until the money ran out. At which point they would all return looking to be re-hired. And that she would definitely re-hire at least most of them because, due to quick turnover the positions would be opened again within a couple months’ time, and of course none of them would need re-training in any case.

These are some of the “heroes” that man the nation’s nursing homes. Whether that story is representative, I don’t presume to know, but I remember thinking at the time, “I wonder how commonplace this is; I wonder how many nursing homes across the country experience this year-in, year-out.” My guess is that the answer is “more than any of us cares to know.”

Laura writes:

The mother of a friend of mine is in an assisted living facility. My friend usually visits her every day. When the facility was locked down in March, she still went every day but stood outside her mother’s window on the ground floor. After four days, she noticed a definite change in her mother’s appearance. She told the staff that her visits were necessary to her mother’s survival and insisted they essentially make her an unpaid staff member so that she could go inside again. They agreed and she is now allowed every day into the building. Her mother instantly improved and is back to normal.

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