Learned Helplessness

My paternal grandmother, who recently turned 88, is terminally ill. My relatives spend hours a week on ding-dong debate with the hospital doctors and medical practitioners in the family about my grandmother's condition. Not too long ago, when she was still walking fit, the same relatives spent copious amounts of time, mapping out fuss-free and effort-less solutions to her every care in life. As simple as: taking a bath, reading the newspaper, a medicine shelf, a supplement shelf, walks in the park, to more complicated things like: kitchen organisation, things she might need to buy, clothes she might need to buy after she lost weight, a roster of which family member attends to her which day and what time of the week, medicine consumption schedules, gram-mage of carbohydrate and protein and dietary fiber per meal – so that she would need as little mental or physical input as possible.

I don't agree about the physical part, and I can't disagree more about the mental part. Impact activity increases bone density. Weight-bearing activity keeps muscles in tone. Mental activity preserves neuro-linkages. Lack of activity, like excessive sleeping, is not good for health.

Spiritually, while she wasn't curtailed, she was much-marketed Christianity, to the end that her birthday invitation card resembled a eulogy in print, only describing her journey to being Christian.

As vocal as I am, I'm born into a family where kids are to be seen and not heard- which explains why I just have to rant over here. I hope someone from the family looks here and sees my account. Probably a few folks might sit me down for a talk of sense and morals, but it's not going to make me think any better about why things were the way they were.