Wu Guangqiang jw368@163.com MY 100-year-old mother passed away in peace two weeks ago at a nursing home. She left the world without any regrets. Though not wealthy all her life, she, as well as my late father, had a priceless treasure: children’s filial piety. In their youth, my parents braved all the hardships to raise us children, five in total. It is still beyond my ken how they managed to bring us up with their meager income; we are all healthy not only physically and mentally, but well-educated as well. In return for our upbringing, we siblings spared no effort to take care of our parents in their later years. They never spent a single day without their children’s good care. My father died at 90 and my mother at 100. Their longevity is enviable for most of my relatives and acquaintances. They were lucky, as they had multiple children, and filial ones. Yet, my pleasure was soon diluted by the thought of the bleak picture set in store for my generation in their later years, most of whose members have only one child. I consider it wishful thinking to expect the end of my own life to be as satisfactory as that of my parents. It’s almost certain that I will be infected with a growing epidemic: loneliness. It’s difficult to expect an only child to pay frequent visits to his old parents when they are housebound and to take a good care of them when they are bed-bound. He may be too busy struggling with his own work and family to fulfill his filial duty. After all, one child is by no means an equal for multiple ones. Several years older than me, my elder siblings are already anxious about their last years. Various factors have overshadowed the prospect unless things change for the better. Without necessary assistance, it’s impractical to spend their final yeas at home for most seniors with only one child, so living in a nursing home seems like the best option. But this choice is out of many aged people’s reach. The scarcity of vacant beds in nursing homes and the shortage of caretakers are making staying in such an institution increasingly unaffordable for most pensioners. When my mom was admitted to the facility last year, the monthly cost was 3,000 yuan (US$437), quite acceptable for a pensioner, and vacant beds were always available. The sharp rise in the number of new residents is pushing up the cost. A few days before my mom passed away, we received a fee hike notice: a minimum 30 percent increase for each resident and an additional surcharge will be levied on the south-facing beds and on long-term residents. The longer the stay, the higher the cost. It looks like that only those with deep pockets will be able to spend their last years in such a facility. The question is how deep the pocket should be. What if a lonely senior citizen is too old and senile to look after himself yet unable to afford a bed in an institution? The worst scenario could be very tragic: committing suicide or dying at home unnoticed. On Jan. 7, a 78-year-old man committed suicide by hanging himself on a hill behind his own house in a village in Anhui Province, leaving his old wife alone in the world. He could not bear the loneliness any more. The couple have a son and a daughter. The daughter has been missing for years and the son has not been home for years since he went to work in a city. The tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. There are millions of elderly people living alone in rural areas with their children working far away. Nursing institutions are barely available, so what will happen to them? There have been reports about cases of the aged dying at home. Some were dead for weeks, months, or even years, before being discovered. There will be over 400 million people over the age of 60 by 2050 in China, and how to take care of them has bearing on the nation’s stability. The good news is that the government is experimenting with a home-based care system for elderly in several cities. Hopefully, a satisfactory solution will be found. (The author is an English tutor and a freelance writer.) | 