How Many Christmases?

As my Christmases become more senescent, I think more about the fact that God only gives us so many Christmases to celebrate if we live the average life expectancy in our country.

With each Christmas, people should not be looking for gifts, but should be thankful for being because life is a perfect gift for each of us, we should be grateful for what we have and for our families.

As a child, living under an atheist, communist regime, I decorated our pine Christmas tree with ornaments I made from colorful crepe paper and filled them with candy. I strung a garland made from shiny paper links glued together, the occasional cookie, an apple, a rare chocolate bar, and an orange. A few expensive glass ornaments were handled with care and hung on the more solid branches. Metal holders with small red candles were clipped to the outer branches. I was allowed to light up a few on Christmas Eve while mom supervised, to make sure that the tree and our apartment did not catch fire.

As I decorate our Christmas tree, it takes us much longer than it used to.  We start early and do a little bit each day and it may take two-three days, but the final result is beautiful. I take down a few boxes of ornaments and realize that I have collected way too many over the years, but which ones do I discard? Some have special meanings, and it is hard to part with them.

Gone are the live blue spruce trees that Mr. Alan used to set up in our living room year after year. Mr. Alan is smiling from Heaven because our tree is now artificial.  His trees smelled so fresh and divine and filled our house with the scent of Christmas and the visions of frost, icicles, and snow.

We watered the tree daily but our Tiger, a bottomless ‘camel,’ drank as much water as we added. At least he did not try to eat the ornaments or climb the tree to chew on the electric wire and lights. When the needles started falling, the wonderful fir smell persisted for a short while. Despite vacuuming, we still found sharp fir needles on the carpet late into the summer.

Christmas is a different time for many people. But the left has tried to diminish and destroy it by introducing the Elf on the Shelf and the non-Christian Kwanzaa started in 1966 after the Watts riots.

On a recent trip to Disney World, although there were a few large fir trees with ornaments and red and pink poinsettias everywhere, there was no reference to Christmas at all but there was ample reference to Kwanzaa.  A black choir sang on a large stage, entertaining visitors, and advertised Kwanzaa celebration on December 26. No mention whatsoever of Christmas.

The joyous Merry Christmas has been replaced by Happy Holidays, in a progressive attempt to be “inclusive,” and now by “Merry & Bright.” I am personally confused what is “merry” and what is “bright,” but it does not seem to bother other people who go about their daily lives ignoring it, until the ‘Merry Christmas’ practice disappears completely. The stores look bleak, almost no decorations to remind people of the celebration of a very important tradition for the western world – Christmas.

It is a special day for Christians and a spectacular day for all children around the world. They wait with bated breath for old man Santa Claus with his white beard and Ho, Ho, Hos, to bring them some desired toy they wanted all year long. This magical man embodied the selfless act of giving:  toys, food, warm clothes, health, love, familial peace, friendship, and joy.

The flying Santa Claus is a tradition, an idea, and a miracle man who can make that special wish come true for all children of the world, small and grown.

Christmas is now for me a time of reflection of our past, present, and the future. The previous Christmases have flown by, with my small family around a table laden with food and our happy children with their toys, and now alone with my husband.

Instead of giving gifts to baby Jesus each year, we chose the less fortunate children who placed their wishes in the Angel Tree at our local mall, and we gave gifts to children who eagerly expected the miraculous Santa to visit them while they slept peacefully in their beds.

Like them, we do not have much family left and those remaining are scattered around the globe. Only the idea of instantaneously traveling Santa Claus with his magical sleigh and the amazing flying reindeer could reach them all. Santa can squeeze through any chimney, avoid any fire, open any door, and eat billions of cookies left by children eager to please him.

But in the material chase to bring happiness to others and especially to children, we forget the simple pleasures of Christmas, love, laughter, being here and now, songs, prayer, and the presence of God in our lives.

Photo copyright: Ileana Johnson

 

My First Flight

Most Americans have fascinating stories to tell about their first flight ever and the experiences associated with that flight. The stories form a large ball of yarn added to the oral history of humanity, unwritten stories that sometimes are told to friends, strangers, family, and whoever is willing to listen.

One hundred years ago, very few people could have even envisioned that humans would fly on a regular basis inside a metal tube propelled by jet fuel and would be able to reach all corners of the world, not just a small world around their homes, in the city, the village, the dessert, on an island, or a hut in the jungle.

My first airplane flight was in 1978. I was leaving my country of birth which was tightly controlled by the Communist Party with fists, arms, soldiers, agents, policemen, informers, and the military.

I was in a daze, leaving my family behind forever and everything I’ve ever loved and known, moving to the shining city on the hill, across the Atlantic, the mythical America, the land of the free and of the brave. Part of me wanted to go and part of me wanted to stay.

I was happy to escape tyranny, but did I really know what was awaiting me? I was accompanied by my husband and mother-in-law who was just a stranger who smiled a lot and spoke English with a lilting southern accent. Everybody loved her because she was so pretty and sweet.

Would I be able to understand my new home and its people? Would they understand me? Would they accept me, the suspicious foreigner from a communist country? Would they treat me with kindness, would they welcome me in their midst? Would the customs and religion be alien to me? Would I like the food? Would I like where my fresh husband would take me? What would my life be like?

After hiccups at the airport where angry men with Russian guns threatened to take away my tiny gold wedding ring because it was Romanian gold and could not be exported and after my mother-in-law took it off my finger and put it on hers, I sat quietly in my assigned seat, a shaking storm of present and future fear raging in my heart and mind and watched the airplane door. When will it close?  

When no frightening agent came to yank me off the flight, the door finally closed, and the plane started rolling on the tarmac towards alleged freedom, I breathed a deep sigh of relief and started crying quietly.  It was a sad cry of loss, of pain, of inner suffering, of terminal good-byes, and of fear of the unknown. It was not a cry of joy.

After a long flight, we landed in New York on a cold January the 13^th day. I was relieved, bewildered, did not have a dime in my pocket, and the only picture I have from JFK shows a happy, smiling me. But I was not smiling on the inside, I was sad because of fear, apprehension, misery, and loss. On the upside, I thought I was finally free to be me and to speak my mind.

The next leg of the flight carried me south and then, after landing, we took a long drive in the darkness, to the isolated farm where I would spend the next two years of my life.

Knowing what I know today and the experiences I’ve had since my first flight 45 years ago, would I do it again, would I take such a huge life-altering chance and climb the steps onto that Delta airplane bound for America? The answer is a resounding NO.

Traditional Family or the American Socialist Vision of an Extended Family

Having a child while employed by the federal government in the U.S. now seems to be a piece of cake – both the mother and the father get twelve weeks of paid leave to care for their progeny. The rest of the country is lucky if they are able to get six weeks of unpaid leave without actually losing their jobs.

The American Marxists, according to Sarah Leonard, praised the East German communists who “believed strongly in sex education, occasionally of the soft-porn variety, and in “good examples of sex ed and gender-equal social policy.” She also applauded all of the Nordic states that “boast liberal abortion laws.” These social policies are designed for “gender equality.”

Leonard lauded maternal employment rate in Denmark (over 80 percent) and believes that “generous safety nets also ensures that women are not compelled to marry to tolerate men for mere survival.” In her opinion, such welfare allows people to enjoy a higher quality of life than the average American by working fewer hours and spending more time at home. She fails to mention how deeply in debt these Nordic countries are and how high their taxes are.

Leonard believes that the American family of the future will not experience ‘wage exploitation’ and it is imperative to transform our society into a socialist one. She makes the following policy suggestions for “socialist reproductive justice and care:”

1.       Universal twenty-four hour high quality communal child care

Guaranteeing pre-school in Denmark  – providers cannot charge more than a quarter of the cost and those who cannot afford care for their children get it for free. People who understand economics know that nothing is free, someone has to pay for it and that someone is the government through heavy taxation.

I lived in a truly socialist country with a socialist economy and daycare was paid by the Communist Party only for the children of select Communist Party members in good standing, places were limited, and the rest of the country had to care for their own.

American socialists only quote convenient data from countries that are not socialist countries, they are capitalist economies with generous welfare which extends to day care.

Brenner suggested that, in this country, child care be offered as “worker cooperatives.” Parents and ‘other community stakeholders’ would make decisions. Nobody mentions who these community stakeholders are. Boards of education and social services have overstepped their bounds as of late in regards to our children’s education and well-being.

2.       Housing as a human right To solve the dearth of public housing, she suggests that “massive amounts of public housing” be built, supported by “a vast new infrastructure of health and welfare services, clinics, childcare facilities, kindergartens, schools, sports facilities, public libraries, theaters, cinemas, and other institutions.” To have a perfect ‘socialist care,’ elder care would be combined. This would be called ‘collective governance,’ sponsored by labor unions. Leonard sees this as the only way to “democratize daily life and the world of the family.”

3.       Free abortion on demand Socialists advocate “reproductive justice.” Socialism should have abortions in all hospitals, on demand, and doctors well-versed in performing them. The socialist country I experienced did not allow abortion under any circumstance and doctors and women who received abortions were put in jail with harsh sentences. The Communist Party was interested in increasing the numbers of the proletariat and of its cheap and equal labor force.

4.       Ending policing  This is a trend developing in almost every state of the United States, the Marxist Democrats are busy defunding the police while crimes escalate. Socialists want criminal records to disappear and be replaced by health care, mental health care, less poverty, and housing security, “all core socialist goals” of “restorative and transformative justice.”

Socialists do not mention any personal responsibility for poor education choices, family breakdown, violence, and bad choices in general of those who are incarcerated.

A true socialist society takes a hard line on policing, jail time, criminality, recidivism, and other bad choices their citizens make. They are beaten and incarcerated without any benefit of “restorative and transformative justice,” a liberal construct invented and defined by Marxists in the U.S.

5.       Extended family American socialists propose that family be extended to non-traditional family in light of the homophobia and transphobia they perceive as destroying the landscape of our society. A wide range of desirable arrangements will change family forever.

They see men as menstruating and giving birth.  Others want reproductive labor to be outsourced just like manufacturing. In their neoliberal world, socialists want to break away from what they perceive as an ‘austerity state’ into a radical new world of “multiplicitous families.” Shulamith Firestone declared that pregnancy and birth are “gruesome” and would like all babies to be grown outside the body.

But the history of true socialist societies proves that traditional families are still the keystone of biological life.

American socialists and Marxists use all Nordic countries as examples of perfect socialism when in reality these countries are not socialist, they are capitalist economies with generous welfare programs and high taxation both at the corporate level and for personal income tax.

American Marxist educators, not to be left behind, are pushing a full-porn sex education for American public students, starting as early as kindergarten. No amount of parental opposition to this new curriculum seems to make any difference, the Marxist educators are going full steam ahead with their ideological and sexual education of American students of any age.

 

 

 

My Christmas Tree

  

Photo: Ileana Johnson

As long as I can remember, my Dad came home every December with a scraggly blue spruce, fragrant with the scent of winter, tiny icicles hanging from the branches. The frozen miniature crystal daggers would melt quickly on Mom’s well-scrubbed parquet floor. I never knew nor asked where he had found it, or how he could afford it. His modest salary of $70 a month barely covered the rent, utilities, and food. Mom had to work as well to afford our clothes. Prices were subsidized by the government and salaries were very low for everybody regardless of education and skill. We had to make do with very little.

No matter how bare the branches of my Christmas tree were, it was magical to me. Two metal bars forged by hand helped Dad nail the tree to the floor at the foot of the couch where I slept in the living room that doubled as my bedroom. Our tiny apartment only had one bedroom where my parents slept.

Decorating it was a fun job every year since I made new decorations from colorful crepe paper. We had to be creative; we could not afford glass ornaments. We made paper cones covered with craftily rolled crepe paper and filled with candy. I hung small apples with red string, tiny pretzels, home-made butter cookies, candied fruit, raisins, and an occasional orange wrapped in tissue paper with strange lettering, coming all the way from Israel. Each year we bought 12 small red and green candles which we attached to the tree with small metal clips. We were careful to clamp them at the tip of the branch to keep the tree from catching fire when the candles were lit. The tree would live for two weeks before the prickly needles fell all over the living room floor.

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

One year I spent Christmas with uncle Ion and his wife. A gifted mechanical engineer, Ion could fix and build anything. He promised that he would fashion lights for his Christmas tree. He worked painstakingly for weeks, soldering tiny copper wires into bundles that stretched along the branches of the tree like a magical cascade to which he soldered at least 200 tiny bulbs sold as bike lights. It was a labor of love! When the wires were finally attached to a relay, the bulbs lit up like a waterfall. Nobody had such a fantastically blazing tree in the whole country. I was amazed at his dedication and craftiness and never forgot his fairytale Christmas fir.

We did not have a tree skirt but we used one of Mom’s hand-stitched table cloths. The whole apartment smelled like the fragrant mountains and, for a couple of weeks we forgot the misery that surrounded us. We lit up the 12 candles on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day.

Every night for two weeks, I would admire my enchanted tree until I fell asleep, wondering what special treat I would find under my pillow on Christmas morning. It was never much, but it was such a cherished joy!

Photo: Ileana Johnson

 

Saint Nicholas Day was celebrated on December 6^th. We really didn’t know much about the real St. Nicholas, Santa Claus’s namesake. St. Nicholas was a popular saint in the Orthodox Church and presumed the bishop of Myra in Turkey in the 300s. There were many legends of St. Nicholas - the more famous story that he was the son of a wealthy family in Patara, Lycia. When his parents died, he gave away his fortune. One such random act of kindness involved throwing three bags of gold through the windows of three girls who were going to be forced into prostitution.

On Saint Nicholas Day, I would put my boots outside the door, hoping that they would be filled with candy in the morning and not coals. Grandpa had a wicked sense of humor – he would sometimes fill one boot with sticks and another with candy and a chocolate bar.

Grandpa never bought a blue spruce - we cut a fir tree from the woods. We were careful not to cut down a tree that had bird nests in it. We decorated it with garland made from shiny and multi-colored construction paper. We cut strips, glued them in an interlocking pattern and voila, we had our garland. For ornaments we used walnuts and shriveled apples from his cellar, tied with Grandma’s red knitting wool.

The warm adobe style fireplace built from mud bricks mixed with straw cast a dancing glow on the tree decked with  tokens of food, something our heathen Roman ancestors did during the celebration of Saturnalia. On December 17, the polytheistic Romans celebrated Saturnus, the god of seed and sowing, for an entire week. As Christians, we celebrated the birth of Christ and the religious traditions in our Orthodox faith, in spite of the communist regime forcing the transformation of Christmas into a secular holiday.

On Christmas Eve, after we ate Mom’s traditional Christmas supper, roasted pork, baked chicken, sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls with ground meat and rice), and mamaliga (corn mush with butter cooked in a cast iron pot), we went to the midnight service at the Orthodox Church not far from our house. Sometimes it was a sloshy trek and other times it was icy and slippery. If we got lucky, a heavy snow would turn our walk into a winter wonderland with dancing snowflakes shining in the weak street lights. We had to bundle up well – the church was not heated and we circled it three times during the procession with burning candles in our hands. I always wore my flannel pajamas under many layers of warm clothes. To this day, pajamas are my favorite garment – cozy and comfortable, keeping my body warm.

I decorate my Douglas fir with beautiful lights and shiny ornaments now. My heart fills with loving memories of Christmases past and of family members lost who made our Christian traditions so special.

Christmas, the Season of Faith, Family, and Charity

Caroling in Romania, 1841 Photo: Wikipedia

Christmas was my Dad bringing home proudly a scraggly fir with sparse branches - fragrant with the smell of winter, tiny icicles hanging from the branches, miniature crystal daggers, melting on my mom’s well-scrubbed parquet floor. I never knew nor asked how he could afford it from his $70 a month salary that barely covered the communist subsidized rent, utilities, and food. No matter how bare the branches of my Christmas tree were, it was magical to me.

We decorated it together with home-made paper baskets filled with hard candy, raisins, and small butter cookies, crepe paper garlands, small pretzels, an orange wrapped in fine tissue paper coming all the way from Israel, a few apples dangling from a string, and 12 red and green 3-inch candles clipped carefully away from overhanging branches that could catch on fire.

Mom’s hand-stitched table cloth made a convenient tree skirt. Two metal bars forged by hand helped Dad nail the tree to the floor at the foot of the couch where I slept in the living room that doubled as my bedroom.

I fell asleep and woke up every morning setting my eyes on the scented tree. It lasted two enchanted weeks before the dried needles fell all over the floor.

Christmas was lighting one of the 12 candles for a few minutes every night, careful not to set the tree on fire, basking in the soft glow while Daddy’s twinkly eyes were beaming with pride that he made his family happy once more. We were rich with love and God’s blessings.

Christmas was standing in shorter lines for freshly baked bread, butter, milk, cooking oil, flour, sugar, and the small pork roast mom always baked in the gas oven. Grandpa’s homemade smoked sausages with pretzels toasted on the stove top were always on the menu. Grandpa used to joke that life was so spectacularly good, even the dogs ran around with pretzels on their tails. Pretzels were sold by big bags, hard and stale, but toasting them on the stove made them taste just baked.

Christmas was Daddy opening the ceremonial bottle of red wine freshly brewed that year by cousin Mircea from Grandma Elizabeta’s vineyard grapes.

Christmas were the village carolers in hand-sewn folk costumes coming door to door, trudging through 3 ft. of snow, pulling a plough decorated with a real fir tree, singing traditional songs and snapping their whips in spite of the Communist Party moratorium, forbidding the observance of such religious traditions.

Christmas was sneaking at midnight to the village Orthodox Church with aunt Leana, the singing deacon, lighting candles and praying, surrounding the building when the crowd overflowed its tiny confines into the yard and the cemetery. The cold chilled us to the bone but the inside eventually warmed from our bodies, the candles, and the excitement of prayers and closeness to God.

Christmas was eating with my Mom and Dad, feeling full, happy, and loved in our tiny apartment, sometimes sharing meals with family members who had traveled far to be with us. The spare wool comforter aunt Nicuta had woven, a blanket, and set of sheets painstakingly hand washed would make cozy beds on the floor for the tired traveler – no fire place to light up, just the coils of steam heat which the government generously made sufficiently hot during Christmas to make up for the cold misery during the winter.

Christmas was peering in the shop windows at the glass ornaments we could not afford but I wished I had. They were made in Poland, whimsical fairy tale characters, no religious symbols of any kind, they were “verboten.”

Every Christmas I longed to have the same doll in the window at Omnia department store, dressed with miniature detailed  clothes, real curly hair, blue eyes, and eyelashes. I never asked my Dad because Mom said it cost three months of his salary. I still had my raggedy cloth doll aunt Stella, the village seamstress, had made for me when I was two years old. When my first child was born, Dad mailed her a large doll similar to the one I had longed for. The doll was so big, it stayed in a corner untouched. My spoiled children had too many other toys to play with and never appreciated the sacrifice their Granddad had made in sending such a gift of love.

On Saint Nicholas Day, December 6, I would put my boots outside the door, hoping that they would be filled with candy in the morning and not coals. Grandpa had a wicked sense of humor – he would sometimes fill one boot with switches and another with candy and a chocolate bar. Chocolate was always in short supply and hard to find.

Grandpa never bought a blue spruce - we cut a fir tree from the woods. We were careful not to cut down a tree that had bird nests in it. We decorated it with garlands made from shiny and multi-colored construction paper. We cut strips, glued them in an interlocking pattern and voila, we had our garland. For ornaments we used walnuts and shriveled apples from his cellar, tied with Grandma’s red knitting wool.

The warm adobe style fireplace built from mud bricks mixed with straw cast a dancing glow on the tree decked with  tokens of food, something our heathen Roman ancestors did during the celebration of Saturnalia. On December 17, the polytheistic Romans celebrated Saturnus, the god of seed and sowing, for an entire week. As Christians, we celebrated the birth of Christ and the religious traditions in our Orthodox faith, in spite of the communist regime forcing the transformation of Christmas into a secular holiday.

On Christmas Eve, after we ate Grandma’s traditional Christmas supper, roasted pork, sarmale (stuffed cabbage rolls with ground meat and rice), and mamaliga (corn mush with butter cooked in a cast iron pot), we went to the midnight service at the Orthodox Church not far from her house. Sometimes it was a sloshy trek and other times it was icy and slippery. If we got lucky, a heavy snow would turn our walk into a winter wonderland with dancing snowflakes shining in the weak street lights. We had to bundle up well – the church was not heated and we circled it three times during the procession with burning candles in our hands. I always wore my flannel pajamas under many layers of warm clothes. To this day, pajamas are my favorite garment – cozy and comfortable, keeping my body warm.

When my children were born, Christmas became a tradition of toys and happiness seen through squeals of innocence and twinkly eyes when unwrapping a favorite game, book, toy, stuffed animal, or bike. I taught my children to be charitable and to share with other children who were less fortunate than we.

I decorate my Douglas fir with beautiful lights and shiny ornaments now. My heart fills with loving and longing memories of glowing Christmases past and of family members lost who made our Christian traditions so special.

I hope and pray that American Christmas traditions will be passed on to future generations to light up the season of faith, family, and charity.

 

Contemplating Mortality

Handsome Bogart, 18-years old
Photo: Ileana Johnson 2017

I used to think that it was rather morbid that my in-laws had purchased their burial plots when my husband was a small child. Every time we went for a visit, we stayed in a hotel across from the hilly Memorial Gardens, with a large white praying statue on top. The lush green grass and the occasional Canada geese grazing on the slopes were peaceful and comforting evidence of perennial life.

Every time Ray would drive by he would joke in his inimitable dark humor that he bought his wife an anniversary gift and she never used it. It gave me shivers, imagining my husband’s parents deceased.

As the way of all flesh goes, it seems to be closer and closer that Joan may have to use that anniversary gift from long, long time ago. Time flew by and, as it did, we thought of living, of family, of togetherness, of life’s accomplishments, not of mortality. We thought of ourselves as living forever until someone close or known to us got really sick and died. We brushed away the annoying thought of death, as if it would never happen to us eventually. Yet we all leave this earth as dust, a short lived spark in the memory of those who know us, perhaps love us, who are still alive and left behind.

I had an eerie feeling the first time I visited my Dad’s grave. It was perhaps because I was really sick when he died and I could not attend the funeral so many thousands of miles away. In a sense, I never really had closure. I stared for hours at the pictures of his funeral my uncle had sent me, but it was not the same. It was as if he was still alive in some far away corner of the world.

But I was staring then at this corner of the world and reality slapped me in the face. My Daddy was but dust and my memories of our lives together for the first twenty years of my life. With the grace of God, Dad and Mom made me, cared for me, and loved me enough to let me go to a better place so far away. How do you ever thank your parents for choosing life?

I knew Dad’s mortal remains where interred there, but his spirit was somewhere else, in Heaven, but in some ways it lived inside of me. It was so quiet around me, you could almost hear every sound nature made, buzzing of bees, the wind moving the tall grasses, and the leaves twirling on tree branches in the gentle breeze. The earth was alive but my Daddy was part of its dust. His bones were resting in a bag deep in the earth, the wooden coffin perhaps long decayed. I planted a flower on his grave wondering if sufficient rain would keep it alive after my departure. How long would it be before it withered and died, turning to dust?

My mom is losing her battle with dementia and she hardly remembers her life in the correct sequential order. We are happy when she remembers our names.

My mother-in-law is paralyzed following a botched spinal operation and will be sent soon to a hospice, closer to the ultimate chapter of her life. Her beautiful blue eyes are still the eyes of the little girl she once was, not understanding what happened, why time flew by so fast.

Bogart is our beautiful Snow Shoe Siamese whom we adore. He is turning 18-years old sometime this year, we don’t know when because my daughters adopted him from the pound. The vet told us, he was one year old then. Although his previous owner abused him in the first year of his life, we gave him a good and loving life and home.

Bogart is showing signs of old age, turning lean and meowing more than usual, probably from arthritis pain, but can still do a hippodrome routine once in a while, running up and down the stairs, thinking he is a race horse. We clip his twisted claws which sometimes get snagged or tangled on various pieces of furniture, tapestry, or leather chairs. He is an old kitty, a centenarian in human years.

As hubby and I are struggling with profound health issues, we are now fully realizing that we are no longer the immortal young who thought we could live forever. It seems like yesterday when we met, the years flew by, but we never had enough time together, we wasted part of our youth with other spouses who were not our soul mates.

My husband is an American hero who dedicated his entire adult life to his country and I hope that someday he will take his proper place at Arlington National Cemetery.

We cannot understood why we were here on earth and why God created us, for what purpose, but we now understand that we are no longer immortal and we hope that we are going eventually to a good place, part of the circle of life, leaving traces of us in our children’s DNA.

Does it matter for most people where the final resting place will be? The sun will rise again, rain and snow will soak the ground, the moon will cast ghostly shadows in my beloved woods, the fierce hawkish wind will blow, and the earth will renew itself as it had done for millennia. We become again invisible atoms in the universe.

 

Visiting a Nursing Home, a Sobering Reality

 

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Entering the nursing home, I never know what human drama peppered with dark comedy emerges. It is a life that most Americans turn their eyes and minds away from. The residents are the forgotten sick, disabled, recuperating, and old Americans about whom few dare to whisper. “This is where people go to die,” I was told by a very good friend. “I would never put my mom in such a place.” But this is where people live now and they want dignity and proper medical care delivered with humanity and patience.

It is bad enough that they cease to have an identity, they are reduced to a wing or room number. It is bad enough that they feel trapped and isolated as they no longer have the freedom to do things they’ve always enjoyed. It is bad enough that they spend most of the time alone because the families have long abandoned and forgotten them. It is bad enough that they realize their own mortality and understand that, when they leave, it will be because they’ve passed on. It is bad enough that no one takes them seriously anymore. They’ve lost their dignity as they are no longer able to feed, bathe, and wipe themselves. They depend on the kindness or meanness of someone else who is paid to care for them but often abuse or neglect them.

On the positive side, the residents get medical care, however slowly or quickly, three meals a day that they may not have gotten before; they befriend others in the same position in life, and are forced to participate in activities to stimulate their minds and social skills.

The smell of bodily fluids is overwhelming on most days, even for those used to it. Patients are showered twice a week, some screaming for help because they’ve been bathed last month and they don’t need it again. Some don’t speak English but scream and protest a shower anyway. In their third world countries, it is hard to find water and soap or indoor plumbing, so showers are rare.

There are never enough caretakers to handle the entire floor of patients and some are left to wallow in their feces and urine. It is difficult and time consuming to change diapers on someone who cannot move and many are left for 5-12 hours in beds entirely wet. Even babies scream bloody murder if they are not changed every two hours and are left with a wet diaper too long. Patients develop constant urinary tract infections from such neglect. One caretaker to five patients is not enough help. I don’t know what the margin of profit is for nursing homes but the large fees charged per patient should at least include keeping them clean and dry. It is not easy convincing a 160 pound person to cooperate – much harder than dealing with a 10 pound baby.

A few crafty patients escape through the elevators even though they are coded. One man was chased half way down the road on the side of a very busy highway. A woman was sitting on a bench outside, all dressed up, ready to go for an imaginary job interview. Another patient, who can still dial the phone, calls 911 regularly screaming for help; the police comes and stays outside for a while. It is hard to ignore calls of desperation even from a dementia patient. You never know when the call might be real.

Patients are transported to doctors and left there for hours. Nobody comes back on time to pick them up and some are forgotten. When they are discovered missing, a search ensues. A doctor’s office eventually calls a cab, the patient is delivered back to the nursing home and the nursing home refuses to pay the fare. Mary* suffered such an indignity recently when the cabby threw her wheelchair in disgust on the curb, potentially injuring the patient who was semi-mobile. She did not have the $11 to pay the fare.

There is an ombudsman listed on the wall if a patient needs help or is being abused but who is going to call them? Many patients have been abandoned there by their relatives who only show up once a year, usually around the holidays, to make sure their relatives don’t leave them out of the will.

Many patients are so alone, I’ve never seen anybody visit them in the two years I’ve gone by regularly. I advocate for better care for my mom, but most have nobody to make sure their relatives are properly treated and handled with care and respect.

But some staff members really do care, and it is heartbreaking for them to see their patients die - they are sad and shed tears. Encountering mortality and imagining the end of life for every human being is a very sobering experience. Nobody wants to ever live in such a place, they would rather die suddenly.

Jeremy* is the oldest resident, he has few family members left, his parents, who were his caretakers, have passed on long time ago. He still remembers his previous life and talks in halted speech about his mom’s pancakes.

Barbie* kept packing her bags to go home every day for a year and a half. She was sweet, wondering around other patients’ rooms, asking them if they knew when her daughter was coming to pick her up. She died one day when she stopped eating and drinking. She finally went home to heaven without her packed bags. Yesterday I saw her frilly favorite blanket and other personal possessions in a clear plastic bag in the hallway, waiting to be donated.

A Russian man talks constantly about his homeland, his garden, and his wife, especially how beautiful his town was. Nobody knows what he is saying except me. I hear his voice and my eyes tear up wondering how this man wound up in this particular nursing home, so far away from Russia.

The staff is far away from home too, they are mostly African and Asian transplants. Some speak English well, some don’t. Some are dedicated to their jobs, others could not care less. Those are the ones to watch because they are abusive physically, verbally, and neglectful.

They have coloring activities for people with severe dementia; those patients are kept behind locked doors in a wing sadly named Arcadia. The rest get to play bingo, have coffee socials, outings to Walmart, or a Christmas party and a collective monthly birthday party. Musicians are brought in once in a while to entertain those who still have their faculties but are suffering of other illnesses. A beautiful brown lab wonders the halls and enters certain rooms to let residents pet her. She is old herself, with a bad hip, slowly waddling in pain across the hard linoleum.

There is a beautiful Christmas tree in the lobby but most patients never get to see it as they are never ambulatory. Transport vans come and go, delivering the really sick patients on sudden visits to the ER. Some come back, some don’t.

When a new neighbor passes suddenly, the reality of a corpse behind a closed door across the hallway is a very sobering experience. There was once life there, screaming in pain, now it is silence. I am not sure if the soul has gone to heaven or it’s still hovering over the deceased’s bedridden body.

People screaming in pain become a daily reality. There is no medicine that could take their entire pain away. Such a cocktail of drugs would rob them entirely of their humanity and they would become comatose. Staff nurses can only do so much to alleviate their patients’ pain.

A nursing home visit should be a required part of American high school and college education. No matter how ugly, sad, or cheery, it is a reminder of where we all might wind up someday if we live long enough. It’s a vivid lesson about the frailty of human nature, a lesson that nobody should take their good health for granted, and we should behave decently and morally towards our fellow humans.

 

*Not their real names

Engineered Migration and Demographic Suicide

As the engineered tide of illegal immigrants is flooding Europe and North America, small countries are overwhelmed and have made inefficient and weak attempts to stem this deluge and to close the Schengen zone borders.

Griff Witte wrote on November 3, 2015 on the front page of the Washington Post, “As migrant tide reaches a new high, pressure builds for Europe to seal its borders.” As they are “tempted to close the doors” of the “cherished continent open borders for good,” the big white elephant in the room questions are, why would westerners destroy their nations on purpose by allowing in jihadists disguised as “refugees,” and, why is it necessary to bring in unskilled and often illiterate labor from third world nations?

As Michael Savage wrote so aptly in his recent book, with Government  Zero you have “zero borders, zero language, and zero culture,” you have a nation in shambles.

I wrote about western demographic suicide long time ago in my book, Liberty on Life Support, but it bears repeating that a senescent Europe is not having enough babies to replace its dying population. http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Support-Ileana-Johnson-Paugh-ebook/dp/B008CL3G3M/ref=sr_1_3_title_0_main?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405352347&sr=1-3&keywords=Liberty+on+Life+Support

Author George Weigel described how Europe is committing “demographic suicide” by failing to “create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation.” http://eppc.org/publications/christophobia-afflicts-europe/

Most western European nations produce less than the necessary replacement value of 2.1 children per family for many reasons: birth control, abortion, unproductive and unemployed young people who live longer in their parents’ homes, pursuing careers, exploring and following immoral and perverted lifestyles, making selfish choices, and occupations that do not require a large family to support the farm. The solution has been to import immigrants to fill the demographic and no-skill employment needs.

The historian Neagu Djuvara found fault with the lack of ideals, morality and blatant debauchery among civilized society, especially young people. Europeans and Americans alike lack ambitions, he said, and have stopped having children. The West has thus created a vacuum which third world counties are more than happy to fill with their fertility rate of 8.1 children per family.

Legal and illegal immigration has been facilitated by generous welfare programs in nations like Sweden, Finland, Norway, U.K., France, Belgium, and Denmark.  Ghettoes were formed, countries within a country, where immigrants rejected integration, producing sub-cultures that clashed with western civilization in every way.

Refusing to learn the language, the immigrants promised the destruction of the very country they occupied. As they received welfare and free housing, they vowed to remake Europe into a new world order Caliphate.

Bruce Bawer aptly named his book, “While Europe Slept,” describing the Muslim takeover of many European countries as inevitable and enabled by appeasement, self-censorship disguised as political correctness and hate speech, apologies, and across the board accusations of “Islamophobia.”

The “guest workers,” “refugees,” “asylum seekers,” or “family reunification” claimants deliberately destroyed their papers in route to the country of destination, knowing that they would evade detection if they were terrorists. They came from very poor, remote villages, and were highly hostile to Western values and history, and are not likely to accept them.

They are very dishonest, corrupt, and adept at taking advantage of the generous welfare system: unemployment, public assistance, relief payments, child payments, disability, cash support, and rent allowance. Welfare is based on the honor system in some Nordic countries, but Islamic law gives them advice to abuse the infidels’ system, “to cheat and lie to the countries that harbor them.” The monetary benefits are considered “jizya,” a tribute that infidels in Muslim-controlled countries must pay in order to stay alive.

In line with this administration’s plans, young “refugees” are being settled around the country in small and conservative communities who have no idea how to deal with them, where they came from, and who they are. These young men of military age who hate western civilization and our way of life, are supposed to fill the vacuum and replace childless Americans.

People in the U.S. have various opinions why Americans are not having enough babies and why men and women in the civilized world are afraid of marriage and commitment. Dr. Savage dedicated part of one show to this very question.

The opinions of middle-aged men and women are varied:

 

-          Culture has changed,  one no longer needs kids to care for their parents in old age, and women work on careers full-time, leaving less time and resources for raising children

-          People are more selfish and are looking for that perfect wife from Hollywood, genetically perfect, plastically beautiful, smart, famous, and petite

-          Because men don’t commit to marriage, young women are pushing around strollers with dogs and cats

-          Young people play the field, can have sex every day with a different person, pornography is available everywhere, or they already live together without commitment

-          Birth control and abortions are readily available and cheap when compared to raising a child

-          Public schools and environmentalism have brainwashed students that there are already too many humans on the planet and are negatively affecting the health of Mother Earth

-          Out of wedlock kids are raised by welfare government-daddy

-          Morals have decayed and families have broken down by high rates of divorce and by government laws redefining marriage

-          The young have been raised to become the selfish “me and only me” generation

-          Economics dictated that children were an asset in agrarian societies but they are a liability in an industrial society; they live longer and without shame with their parents because they are looking for the perfect dream job

-          Young generation have such high and entitled opinion of themselves, they want high salaries right away, no effort involved, they are a gift to the world, and become depressed when reality hits

-          Helicopters parents have raised them with a false sense of self, they were told they were special and received trophies for participation, with no understanding of failing and starting over

-          If you did not marry someone in the village, you were a failure and had no one to care for you in old age; now you have mobility and accepted immorality, divorce is no longer shameful or a sin; you can tap into the whole world with the Internet, you bring a person from the other side of the world to marry; you are never satisfied and ads confuse you constantly thus exacerbating your narcissism

-          Television and Hollywood created a false sense of yourself, you are waiting for Mr. or Mrs. Perfect because you have plenty of time and  there is always something better out there; you want to be in the one percenters without effort or education, just overnight success

-          Ads projected the white father as the bumbling idiot and Hollywood portrays stupid parents who have to defray to the wisdom of their children, of their little brats who know better than they do

-          Women’s liberation and women working outside of home have destroyed the family unit, there is no more social pressure to get married while men are looking for “bad girls” because that is how the media portrays the beautiful and the desirable

The opinions of young males and females are:

 

-          Women’s liberation is to blame - once women decided to educate themselves, men felt less of an obligation to get married and take care of them

-          Millennials put off being adults because their parents coddle them and allow them to live in their homes indefinitely

-          People live longer thus they can delay maturity and marriage

-          Women and men with morals and religious beliefs are hard to find

-          If women show themselves more independent, men feel less obligated to provide

-          Children are more expensive and the economy is bad

-          Women are sexual objects and men do not respect them

-          The Internet facilitates pornography - men don’t feel the need to be monogamous

-          Definition of marriage has changed, marriage is no longer a religious covenant, it is a social contract and the law says you can now marry anyone and eventually anything

-          Divorce, alimony, and child support are expensive

-          Forced marriages don’t exist anymore because having kids out of wedlock is no longer shameful or scorned by society or by religion

-          Cheating is so prevalent that both men and women want to make sure they marry the right person in order to avoid an expensive and painful divorce

-          For Europeans, housing is so expensive, many potential couples cannot afford married housing or the wait list is so long that they delay marriage and live with their parents

Michael Savage asked pointedly why young men are terrified of the responsibility to have children, why would they allow family lines to die out with them, why commit cultural suicide while taking care of millions of illegal aliens’ children via tax-driven welfare. It is certainly difficult to find moral values in a bar, in a predominantly drinking and partying culture.

Men are afraid of commitment and cite economics as an important reason. But, was it ever inexpensive or easy to have children? “People had babies during the Black Plague and even in concentration camps during the Nazi regime,” Savage said.  Non-western cultures have no problem having lots of babies.

Is the culprit the “chickification” of men driven by the feminist “man-hating movement” that ridicules and infantilizes men, especially white males, and the lack of teaching manhood and responsibility? Is it rap music that glorifies violence against women and utter disrespect for life?

Is it the “hardening of women,” the tough females, who intimidate, scare, and drive off many men? Is it the government daddy that created generations of irresponsible young men who reproduce and abandon their offspring and the responsibility to raise and teach the child they created?

While young men and women keep searching for the perfect mate that does not exist, how is it, asked Savage that arranged marriages work well in other cultures that have no problem with fertility? Why do some women lie to have control of their exes, holding their children hostage to this manipulation?

Will the massive engineered migration from third world countries, the demographic suicide of the west, the overall degradation of western society, and the mental disorder of liberalism eventually doom western civilization?