Have Old Parents? Throw Them Out

My mother and father are old. They can’t do most of the household work that they used to a few years ago. They remain sick for most part of the year. Their memory is failing. Even normal tasks like cleaning themselves up when they defecate have to be performed by others. Thought of sending then to an old age home, but that would be an ongoing financial commitment, and why waste money on something or someone that will fetch no returns? Killing them is fraught with legal trouble, for why spend time in jail for killing someone who may die any day soon? So what’s the way out? Just beat them up repeatedly until they can bear it no longer and leave the house on their own accord. If that doesn’t work, just throw them out of the house.

These dear friends are not my sentiments but certainly seem to be those of a growing set of people who do this and more to infirm parents as they are no longer of any use to them. Newspapers, TV channels are filled with such stories and the regularity with which such stories are appearing is frightening as well as depressing to say the least.

I can remember my parents fussing over me when I was little, cleaning me up when I defecated. Feeding me when I was hungry, accompanying me to school and bringing me back home safely. Staying hungry during lean times but ensuring that I did not stay hungry. Burdening themselves with loans so that I can have a good education, and working hard, sacrificing their own wants and desires so that they can fulfill mine.

And I think the parents of these people who are ill treating their creators would also have done the above-mentioned things and more so that they do well in life. After all that it beats me how can people be so cruel. Forget our own parents; we shouldn’t be so cruel with anyone in life. So it beats me as to how come people have the heart to do these things. How can they eat their meals in peace, sleep well at night, and fuss over their own children even as their creators are reduced to a life that even a stray dog should not be made to live?

Have we as a people become so selfish and inhuman that we fail to see anything beyond self? Why do we fail to understand that as time passes and we become infirm, our children will do the same thing to us, as they will follow in the footsteps of their parents? And then we will have no one to blame for what goes round comes round.