We Are Mandated to Be Kind

A terribly sad story from StarMedia this week also reported on Newstalk ZB: “Woman lay dead at home for a month – angry daughter seeks answers”, tells of a woman discharged from hospital after care for her diabetic condition.

A month after her discharge she was found by police.

This elderly lady, a sufferer of dementia and diabetes, who had Parkinson’s and other health issues and wore hearing aids, was discovered by police only after a Kainga Ora staff member found a calling card she had left at the woman’s home about four weeks earlier.

The poor lady was found seriously decomposed, her flesh was “moulded into the carpet” and there were “horrendous blowflies”.

An horrific death under horrific circumstances. Poor thing: she had no one to look out for her, you may think. And rightly: after all, we are mandated to be kind, aren’t we? Whatever can have happened?

This is what happened: the lady had children and not one of them bothered to even make a telephone call, or call or ask someone to keep an eye out for her, to make her a meal, see if she needed help, assist with the shopping, the cleaning and laundry, make her a cuppa and keep her company. No one did anything. Nothing. This poor woman died knowing that no one cared, no one was going to come and help her and no one gave a damn.

The woman’s daughter, Donna Te Wahia, said “The 81 year old was let down by Nurse Maude, Christchurch Hospital, her doctor and St John New Zealand, with a communication breakdown condemning Dickson to languish undiscovered.”

So the family was not mentioned and Te Wahia takes absolutely no responsibility for the death of her mother. And she is “angry”. How dare she. I am not in any way absolving those in positions of care and authority and there are questions that need to be asked, but to put the blame on them alone is unconscionable.

What have we come to when, in a so-called civilised country, with readily available welfare, every description of social service and much-vaunted aroha, a situation like this possible? This poor woman had nothing, just a family who, for over a month, could not be bothered to see how she was, knowing she was either in hospital or had been discharged to her unit in which she lived independently with terrible health. I do not understand how she could possibly have lived alone. And yet how easily has the blame game been played by this abhorrent family: this negligent pack of people who just could not be bothered. There is zero excuse for this tragic outcome. The family should be at the top of the list to care for their mother and yet don’t even include themselves in the line-up of those they are so quick to blame. Those who are on the list will be quick to distance themselves – indeed Nurse Maude was first up to absolve themselves of any responsibility and all its processes will of course support that. So that’s that then they will say. A tragic outcome but nothing to do with us. Te Wahia accepts no blame at all, not a hint of responsibility or shred of remorse.

Asked if the family could have done more to check on Dickson, Te Wahia said her four children also lived far from Christchurch and her mother’s hearing difficulties made communication difficult.

“The children are in Australia, Auckland, Nelson and Hampden [North Otago]. I don’t think it’s the family’s responsibility: we all had faith in the health system,” she said.

“My mother didn’t deserve that. I can’t bring Mum back but I want the system to change for elderly people that are on their own. I would never wish this on anyone else.”

Well sweetheart, neither would we wish this on anyone. Your behaviour and that of other family members is beyond comprehension. But you want the system to change. Of course you do. You don’t want to change though. You don’t even wish to accept your part in this tragedy.

This terrible event is an example of what happens once we allow the state to take control of our lives. ‘The state was responsible’ say the family. ‘Not us. The state and the system let us down.’

The socialist model hates the family unit and wishes to break it. And substantially they have, so that our society is no longer made up of mum and dad and two kids: it comes in every shape and size. I am not against new definitions and changing family dynamics, but I am against state-mandated wreckage that happens once everyone is a beneficiary. And over 80 per cent of us are now just that. Once we are required to hand over responsibility for our income via state-funded benefits of all stripes, our ability to work or to be mandated out of it, to have a jab or not have a jab, to carry papers declaring our status, our eligibility to enter certain premises, to attend a doctor’s appointment in the surgery rather than in an outside garage, to travel freely, to be able to voice an opinion, to protest in a peaceful and orderly manner, to ask questions of those in authority and have a right to expect answers from them, to have an open and transparent government who campaigns on up-front issues, to expect that our wishes will be upheld in what we once knew of as a democracy – once we have handed all those over to a bossy head-prefect in baggy clothes, we have lost.

And that is where we are. Lost. In a labyrinth of Ardern duplicity, dishonesty and deceit, and Mahuta corruption, nepotism and stealth. We are up the proverbial creek without the paddle we desperately need to turn this disaster from the whirlpool that will suck us yet further down. The only way down is down and that is where are headed.

This lady was dead in her home with not a single person anywhere caring anything about her at all. Her deafness made communication with her a problem, said her daughter. Well, take it from one who is profoundly deaf, my family never let that stop them from communicating with me. Never. Yes, it is difficult, but we care about each other and love each other, and difficulties are as difficult as you wish to make them.

My heart hurts for this poor lady, this sadly very unhealthy lady who needed help and did not receive it. Not from her family. Not from the authorities. Not from a neighbour. Not from a friend. NO ONE CARED. What a heartrending story to read. What an indictment on this so-called kind society that our PM lauds. While she was skiting to the POTUS about how smarty-pants she is and braying on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert while wearing a trouser suit that she may have borrowed from Hillary, this other poor lady lay dead, in filth, fly-blown and neglected in every way. I can only hope she didn’t understand what was happening, that the stealthy, creeping web of dementia had clouded reality for her. But she did know. On some basic, primal level, she knew.

Questions remain for the authorities involved. The Te Wahia family should hang their heads in shame.