Shalom My Gantseh Megillah Family and Friends and L’Shana Tova to you and your loved ones. We pray that the inscriptions in this year’s book of life include all of us and those people we care about.

This has been a hectic period for Arnold and me. We’ve been spending a great deal of time with our 103-year-old aunt who is recovering from a broken femur after a serious fall. She is definitely on the mend and is maintaining a remarkable spirit through this entire ordeal.

While caring for Aunty I couldn’t help but think of all the elderly people in our society who need assistance and loving support and are not in a position to receive it. So many seniors are relegated to elder care facilities where they, like Blanche Dubois, rely on the “kindness of strangers.” If you are financially secure you can enjoy the comforts of more exclusive and well staffed facilities. Sadly, the majority of our seniors must exist on limited incomes or government subsidies. The least fortunate of these souls are placed in institutions that barely have enough trained staff and equipment to function on the most rudimentary basis.

Aunty is a member of the fortunate minority who is not in financial difficulty. She has been blessed with the ability to remain in her own home, where she has lived for over 60 years. Her situation allows her to have trusted staff members on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This affords her a level of security and serenity unknown to many others in her age group. Not having to disrupt her life in her later years plays a major role in her long term survival.

The one issue that constantly swirls around my head and interrupts my sleep is how so many of our seniors are not in Aunty’s position. Due to my own medical situation, I have spent a great deal of time in hospitals. During my stays I met many older people who passed through the hospital on their way to a nursing home or senior residence. I listened to some of the most heartbreaking stories I have ever heard. Some of them had gone through their entire savings due to a lack of adequate health insurance or income. Now these elderly people were destined to be housed in a subsidized facility where they would have to share a room with several strangers. Privacy would be a memory, and every move they made would be scrutinized by others.

The fortunate members of this group had loving family who did their best to visit and add some comforts to their lives. Too many of these individuals however, were alone in the world. Their lives were in the hands of others who did not know or understand them.

I have witnessed elderly men and women tied to their wheelchairs so they would not fall or injure themselves. I have seen grey heads nodding in grogginess because medication is used to keep them sedate and undemanding. People who were once self-reliant and proud, are stripped of their dignity and dealt with as if they were infants or mentally incompetent. Most of this mistreatment is not deliberate, but simply exists because we, as a country, do not prioritize senior care with adequate planning and funding. In my heart I feel as if a crime is being perpetrated against people who in their earlier years contributed to their community and country.

We do not revere our senior citizens as do certain other cultures. In our disposable society, we treat the old as being in the way, annoying or even worse, totally useless. We tolerate their needs at best and ignore them entirely at worst. This is a sin. I recognize that most of my comments relate to the situation in the United States, but there are other countries in Western culture that do not fare much better. But the U.S., with its market driven health care system, seems to be furthest away from offering the kind of care our senior citizens are entitled to.

Next week Arnold and I will be back in Seneca Falls, New York with Aunty. She will continue to receive loving care both from the family and professionals, and all in her own home. While I am delighted and relieved to know our aunt is in such a relatively comfortable and secure position, it continues to drive home the point of how much of an exception her situation is.

Arnold and I would like to thank all of you who have sent messages and cards wishing Aunty a speedy and swift recovery. We have read each and every message to her, and she is absolutely thrilled to know so many people care about her. She has asked me to convey her gratitude to the members of the Megillah family and to wish you all a very happy New Year.

We would like to share a brief video of Aunty at her 103rd birthday party, July 17th of this year. You can either click on the “Media” button and choose “videos” on the homepage of the Gantseh Megillah or you can go directly to http://www.pass.to/newsletter/video.htm.


Happy Succoth and see you in November.

Much love to all of you,
Michael