On Wednesday, January 6, students from our class visited the Chicagoland Methodist Senior Services facility on Foster Ave. We collaborated with their activities department to match seniors (high school students) to seniors (elderly residents) for an art activity. Starting from a conversation/interview led by the student, the seniors and seniors got to know each other for a few minutes. Then, each pair received a shadowbox and had access to a buffet of arts-and-crafts materials. The students then helped their resident construct a shadowbox that reflected the residents' interests, hobbies, memories, etc., and many students even added a little something to symbolize themselves.
In case you need a refresher, here's the link to our first post explaining what is posted to the blog. And without further adieu, here are some thoughts from Bryan Padilla and Brittany Camana on their experience with their new elderly friends...
Bryan Padilla
My class and I got the opportunity to interact with some elderly people at the Chicagoland Methodist Senior Services Home. At the home, we made shadow boxes with the elderly. The elderly are a marginalized group that is often seen, but left alone or cast to the side. Old age is something that people all around the world have had to deal with. With old age often comes disabilities and mental degradation, and these ailments can be burdensome to the elderly’s families. Often, in the western world, our elderly are put in nursing facilities where they can be marginalized by their family as well as society.This idea of the elderly's being marginalized can be attributed to the family structure in the modern-day or western world. There are very few senior homes or nursing facilities in developing nations or in times where traditional family structures were intact. In such countries or times, the elderly are/were kept at home where it is/was impossible to ignore them so that they would become marginalized. However, in modern day America, for example, when someone becomes elderly and perhaps burdensome, they are put in a nursing facility. While being away, they become forgotten.
In the Bible, we are called to be respectful with our elders. “Do not rebuke an older man, but appeal to him as a father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with complete purity” (1 Timothy 5:1-2). We are called to look towards our elderly as if they were our mothers and fathers (which in many cases they are.) Would we ever intentionally marginalize our mothers and fathers? Or choose to put them away? The Catholic Social teaching of the Call to Family, Community, and Participation is relevant here. This CST theme calls us to uphold the institutions of family and marriage. Family includes our eldest members.
As someone with a great deal of experience with elderly people, from a personal perspective, I feel especially connected to our service outing and the marginalized elderly people as a whole. Before my grandmother passed away in the summer of 2014, she had declined in health due to old age. Rather than putting her in a nursing facility, my family responded to God’s call - we kept her in our house to take care of her so that she was able to live the last of her days surrounded by her family. Every elderly person was once a little infant; every elderly person is a human. If you have an elderly person in your life such as a family member or neighbor, try to do as Christ calls you to do and stay connected with them. By taking care of our elderly or perhaps visiting a nursing facility, we can make sure that these people are recognized and are not marginalized.
Brittany Camana
For this week’s service outing, our class went to the Chicagoland Methodist Senior Services. While there, each student, or possibly two, got paired up with a senior resident living there. As everyone was settled down and got their partner, each pair was getting to know each other. Most of the seniors had a hard time talking. My partner, Mary Louise, could barely talk, and when she did talk, her voice was so soft that I could barely hear her. However, I was able to hear some of her words and got to learn a lot about her. For example, I learned that she liked flowers, used to play volleyball, liked the colors green and pink, and lived in Chicago her whole life. I was then able to create a shadow box for her. I added a picture of Chicago, stickers of giraffes, a big red flower, and both of our initials (I wanted to include something so she could remember me) on top of a floral background. After I finished and handed the box to her, she smiled and her face was filled with gratitude and excitement.First, society and seniors are involved in this situation. It seems as if seniors are being oppressed by society on a daily basis. Society never places any emphasis on living with the seniors or visiting them often or just taking care of them in general. Society sees it as something that family of the senior should do and it’s nobody else’s business to be interacting with them. However, they do benefit from living within the senior homes. For example, they can socialize with people around their same age for company, have someone to assist them medically, and have someone to cook and clean for them. On the downside though, their are many nursing homes that neglect and treat seniors horribly. They don’t clean after them, help bathe seniors who need assistance, or interact with them, instead seeing them as a bother. This needs to be addressed and handled and put out their more publicly than other news topics being brought up. This is happening predominantly in the United States but other countries also have senior homes as well. The majority of third-world countries would not be able to afford it but countries are coming up and creating places for seniors to live.
In Acts 20:35 it states, "In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" In other words, we should give back to the people who can't help themselves and should give more to others then expect to be given everything.
There is no obvious reason as to why this is happening since each situation varies. Sometimes, seniors live in senior homes because their relatives are busy working or sometimes relatives aren’t willing to take care of a senior. There are various reasons why each senior is sent to a senior home. However, they all come to the senior home because they need help being taken care of. As a society, we must come together and make this issue easier to see. Many of the elderly have disabilities that prevent them from expressing themselves. so we must go into their shoes and advocate for them since they cannot advocate for themselves. 