My father-in-law lived to be 104. We moved him to a retirement community near our home when he was a mere 95, and began the business of taking care of someone who was gradually fading. My husband did most of the heavy lifting in this process as he was a very faithful and devoted son. On those times I accompanied him to see my father-in-law, I was struck by the fact that except for the residents, there were very few males in evidence. Although the visitor parking lot was always full, the cars that drove into it were driven almost exclusively by women. This was a world of daughters, and daughters-in-law. My husband soon became well known and popular with the staff who were intrigued with a man, who was not only visiting on a regular basis, but was overseeing the mundane things in his father’s life such as laundry, bathing, clothing, etc.
I do not know how this has come to be. The care of the elderly seems to be almost exclusively a female task. I know there are many men out there who are taking care of elderly relatives, but they are in the minority.
To find a possible answer we can turn to Shakespeare, who although he wrote almost 500 years ago, shows that the human scene has not changed all that much. Let’s consider his famous quote that starts with “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” This is very familiar, but the following lines in this play As You Like It are not quoted as often since they are a bit depressing. These lines list what he considers the seven stages of life. With his well-deserved insight about the human condition, Shakespeare describes the infant “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms,” then the school boy with a “shining morning face, creeping like a snail, Unwillingly to school.” He then moves on to the lover, the soldier and the justice. Finally, in the last two stages of life he gets closer to old age as he describes a man in the sixth stage,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes.
And then the grand finale, which we all want to ignore, especially those of us approaching this stage,
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Note that this quote is all about men, except for the opening stage in which there is a nurse taking care of the helpless baby. It is, therefore, possibly no surprise that at the end of life it once again becomes women who are taking care of those who have lost all the vigor, status, and remembrance of youth.
In my mind’s eye I can still see that army of women climbing out of cars and heading for the nursing home. Their actions lie in memory like little vignettes: getting a slow moving relative on a walker into a car, or carefully cutting up meat for a shared meal in the dining room, or walking through the lobby with a pile of clean laundry, or stopping to let everyone admire a visiting pet. Their reward, unseen and largely unappreciated by society, is their faithfulness. And once again we can turn to Shakespeare:
He is thy friend indeed,
He will help thee in thy need:
If thou sorrow he will weep; If thou wake he cannot sleep:
Thus of every grief of heart, He with thee does bare a part.