The latte factor
How many coffees would be enough to pay for long-term care in America?
Last week I told you about how my predictions are wrong 99.9% of the time. The one thing I’m confident in predicting, despite Silicon Valley’s breathless promises, is that we’re all going to die.
I spent my morning in Évora’s Capela dos Ossos. The name translates to ‘chapel of bones’ and the fact that it claims to be Portugal’s oldest chapel of bones tells us that it’s hardly the only one. There are other similar Christian sites around Europe, from the catacombs of Paris and Rome to many more small ossuaries.
I’ve never understood the sanctity of the bodies of the dead. When people are distressed over having nothing to bury because their loved ones body was destroyed or when we go to great lengths to bring bodies home for burial, I respect that it’s deeply important to them without having the slightest understanding of why that is. I also don’t really understand cemeteries. I have a much easier time imagining someone’s spirit being in the places we spent time together than in the cemetery where their remains are buried.
Still, it’s jarring to see bones piled up and used as decor. It’s particularly odd to see bones with shiny spots where thousands of visitors have all rubbed the same skull (for good luck? curiosity?). It’s hard to reconcile the Catholic faith that views the body as a sacred relic that will one day rise from the grave and ascend to Heaven also collecting body parts from various cemeteries and piling them up in geometric patterns. There are also the mummies (a cautionary tale about vanity, in this chapel at least) and the body parts of saints (to be prayed to?).
The chapel, like much Christian iconography, is meant to encourage us to contemplate the brevity of life.
Before I walked to the chapel, I’d finished Howard Gleckman’s Caring for our Parents. I appreciated Gleckman’s carefully chosen examples and exhaustive research. I didn’t appreciate his judgemental tone when discussing how unprepared Americans are for the dying process.
Gleckman shares stories of long-term care policies that are unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans, aren’t a good investment for much of the middle class, and may not make good on their promises by rigidly denying claims. He then suggests young people (‘young’ here is anyone under the age of 65) are foolishly not buying long-term care policies because we prefer “designer coffee” and iPods.
He does such a good job of clearly explaining the systemic issues and the way even families that have done everything ‘right’ to prepare for old age still get caught up in the nightmare that is aging in America…and then he can’t resist blaming those very people for their plight. He repeatedly outlines the costs of eldercare — $40,000 a year here, $2 million there, $200 a day plus private aides and incidentals not including medical care. He explains the various systems in Europe that he views as vastly superior to the US hodge podge and proposing we adopt something like that. How very American: he knows the problem is systematic and inescapable, he knows the only solution is a national one…and he still needs to shame us all for not overcoming it.
He ends the book, and this is not really a spoiler for any of us who are familiar with what it’s like to die in America, with the story of a woman whose life became much worse after she died. Because in America a living will is not enough to keep you from being repeatedly resuscitated and outfitted with a pacemaker against your wishes.
I can’t imagine how people understood death in a time when epidemics were as normal as recessions are today. When nutritional deficiencies were widespread. When children routinely died from what are now preventable illnesses and accidents. When a quarter of dementia cases were caused by syphilis. They prayed to Jesus and to the saints in hopes of restoring the dead to life. Now that’s what doctors do every day. I aspire to die only once, yet I know few of us are likely to be so fortunate. I’d be grateful to be brought back like people are in the Bible, where they just get up and walk, fully healed. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works with scientific medicine.
I wonder about the motivation of the monks who decided to build this chapel. I suspect they have a lot in common with Gleckman. Évora’s residents didn’t have iPods in the 1600s, but they had plenty of other designer things for people to squander their money on. Giving all of your worldly goods to the Catholic church and coming to live in a monastery or convent in your old age was the original long-term care insurance. Maybe not so much has changed.
I like to think of the Capela dos Ossos as Portugal’s oldest advertisement for long-term care insurance. At 6 euros, the entrance fee would have bought me at least four lattes and perhaps 45 seconds in a nursing home.
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Denise Brown asks how often we’ve had a medical professional refer us for caregiving support.
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A thought-provoking read, as usual, thank you. I am honoured to be one of your links this week!
I agree with you. The cemetary thing, and the need to see a relic make no sense to me. On the other hand I learned about epidemics killing children by visiting graveyards and reading gravestones. That was interesting.
I also aspire to die only once and my daughter isn't happy about it but has agreed to abide by my decision.