Nursing homes, and the general practice of leaving your parents to rot. My grandparents live in a nursing home two hours away from their whole family. They do have friends in the town who visit occasionally, but my aunt is the only one who can visit regularly. My cousin moved away, and doesn't really have any contact with the family, let alone our grandparents. There's only so many days the average person can make a four-hour road trip. I'm trying to go once every two weeks and phone regularly, but I'm guilty of this too.
Nursing homes are so deeply unsettling that it's hard to work up any motivation to go. Every time I go in the halls, there's at least one person who's either completely lost their mind and can only moan while staring at me with blank eyes, or someone who's begging me to help them, but can't explain what they need. After a while you learn to just ignore these people, because there's nothing I can do that will help them. I've seriously considered breaking people out of there. Having to wear masks and face shields doesn't help either. "Fortunately" Grandpa is forgetful enough that I can break protocol and hug him without risking a ban from the building. That's not hyperbole either, I know someone who couldn't see their grandparents for a few months because they hugged and were deemed to be spreading the virus. Of course, in my country everyone was completely forbidden from visiting for a while anyways.
This is a good nursing home too, everyone there is extremely caring and means well, it's the system as a whole that has problems. The concept of euthanasia is utterly abhorrent, but I think it can go the other way as well. In the name of health we're keeping people alive far past the point where it makes sense. I've been told point blank by plenty of older people that they'd much rather die horribly of covid surrounded by family than live in isolation. Great evil can be done in the name of healing. C.S. Lewis said it best:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."
