Older.

I went to see a vague relative in an old people's home. My Dad's sister is disabled, and that's always been a sort-of tragedy that I didn't realise because she always simply was in a home, in one of those places, and they always say it might be better if she wasn't. It might be.

But those visits always make my Mum and Dad request euthanasia.

I don't hate visiting them at all. I wouldn't mind it, only I feel like I can't talk to my aunt (she's sort of my aunt twice removed) the way I'd like to when everyone else is there watching me. I don't think I'm mother teresa but I don't want them to think I think I am. So instead I sit and watch. My cousin said, "God, I never want to get old". And however much we were all thinking it and feeling terrible, she never should have said it there because you don't know how much the residents know and how they think. And the carers; they just don't care, not a one of them, it looks like. They chat and give us excuses why our relative is losing so much weight so fast and it's not fair. Why is the same state in babies regarded as cute, but these people are shoved off away from view? And why do we want them to improve, why can't we just let them live out their last years without badgering them to remember what their lives were? If I'd been on my own with her, I'd have talked to her (we all did talk to her) and read out loud to her, and maybe sang nice songs to her, and done a crossword with her, or at her. Happy things, because I think now she exists in the moment and can't remember before or after. I'd have made those moments as happy as I could. I wouldn't have said "God I never want to get old". I love my cousin but I could not say that, there, when she acts like they're not people anymore. They ARE people and they need to be cared for, not expected anything of. I think homes should be in the middle of cities and that they should be allowed to go out or in or whatever, and there should be nature tables there and things they can touch and see.

Just because they are nearly dead doesn't mean they should all be confined in that dull dead place with a television blaring at them all day, forcing happiness into a room where they're couched in fear of their own dessicating minds. None of them watch the television, they just bear it because they don't know how to say no. If they could I think they would. I want to cover the place in pictures and proper human voices, not those fake blasting tones that emanate from the box there. It's dreadful; it's like they're rubbing saccharine into dust, and more painful. I hate the lack of effort anyone puts in. The end of someone's life is every bit as important as the beginning, and I can't fathom the way that nobody seems to care, that they're all just left to rot. It makes me sick.