In 2019, there was a study released that detailed the reasons why people do not go to visit their loved ones in a nursing home. The top reason given was that their job or work hours prevented them from doing so. And the number two reason? It’s too depressing. That’s right, 40% of very honest people said they didn’t go to visit a loved one who lived in a nursing home because they found it to be too depressing. It was just too sad for them to see their loved one like that.
At least they were honest. I wonder if the people who said their jobs prevented them from visiting were just using that as an excuse because it sounded more acceptable.
I’m just going to say it: how selfish do you have to be to refuse to visit sweet Grandma because it makes you sad? Seriously? How do you think she feels? Grandma has lost her independence and most of her possessions. Her body and mind prevent her from doing the things she wants to do. She has to suffer the indignity of wearing adult diapers and being bathed by a stranger. She has no control over her schedule. There are very few choices she can make on her own. She barely has enough money to buy snacks from the vending machine, let alone to get her hair colored and permed like she used to. She often wears other people’s clothing because someone else’s clothes ended up in her closet and she can’t find her own. Her days consist of sitting or laying around, watching tv, and playing Bingo. She never leaves the facility and if she does, it’s only for a medical appointment. And to top it all off, no one comes to visit her.
Is going to the nursing home sad? Absolutely! Most nursing homes don’t look like the ones you see on commercials or on their company web pages. They are institutional. They are gray. They are smelly. They are filled with sounds of beeping and people crying out. They are more like a hospital than a home. Seeing a warehouse full of frail and helpless people languishing in their final years of life should make you sad. But it’s not about you. Your visit to someone in a nursing home has the power to transform that person’s entire day and probably entire week.
You see, when you visit, you have one job–to be a friend. To be a listener, a comfort, a blessing. For residents with dementia, a visit from a family member might be the only connection they have to their past and to who they really are. The care staff at the nursing home have many jobs, and while they try to provide relational support to residents, the demands of their job coupled with typical low staffing concerns make it nearly impossible for them to provide any sort of non-medical care.
If you don’t have a loved one in a nursing home, go anyway. At least 60% of residents never have a visitor (for a variety of reasons). The number one thing many of my nursing home friends ask me to pray about is that they’ll get a visit from a loved one. And often, those visits never happen. Will you allow the Lord to use you to fill that void in their life? No, it’s not the same as the family member they long to see. But in some ways, a visit like that is more powerful because you came out of no sense of obligation or duty. You chose to carve out time from your day to visit them. That’s an unselfish love that can provide a much needed balm to a lonely and broken heart.
James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.