How are older people in Christchurch doing?
Living and working in Christchurch over the last year has had its ups and downs. But when is a good time to pause and reflect on how older people are faring?
Some of us were starting to do this by the end of 2010, but then Boxing Day shook us all again. In January, with 2 colleagues, I submitted a conference abstract for the British Society of Gerontology Conference in July 2011, under the title “Older people in a major earthquake: initial experiences and representations”. By mid-February, a group of local Christchurch researchers met to discuss how we might begin to make sense of our learnings since September, and we discussed using a planned April NZAG meeting to discuss this. However, the notes I made from that meeting were still on my desk on 22nd February.
So, now we are in May, can we tempt fate by writing yet another opening line, now better called “continuing reflections and impressions”? Recently, (in the week of April 23) The Press ran a series on older people’s issues in the aftermath of the February quake. Some of the headlines make grim reading “Some old folk isolated”, “Death rate spikes after quake”, and “Choice gone for Christchurch old folk”. Another heading uses the term “earthquake victims” above an article which includes several older people amongst those described as “doing it tough”, two months on. Elsewhere, there is a piece talking about “rest home refugees”. Over 300 rest home residents were part of an emergency evacuation outside Christchurch; in total about 600 beds have been lost in the Canterbury aged care sector. This language stresses vulnerability, limited autonomy, and a loss of security, which affects older people particularly.
Beyond Christchurch, the Sunday Star Times gave front page billing on April 24, to a rerun of a photograph of a 78 year old man, with bandaged head, and claimed that his image (described as a “Thousand-mile stare”) became the enduring image of the quake in media terms. Well down in the text, the “backstory” behind the image becomes clearer. This man was “miffed” to find his photograph used in this way. He was a regular volunteer showing tourists around Christchurch Cathedral, on duty that day. Under other circumstances, he might equally have become a “cover boy” for Active Ageing, contributing his time towards his city in this way.
In The Press series, there are also more positive stories of community and individual resilience, such as the one under the heading “Warmth of a hug and food ease fears”. This describes a church hall being used as a drop in centre for older residents in the neighbourhood to come together for shared food and links with each other. Many of their neighbours have moved out, either short or long term, leaving older people more likely to be “home alone” in their street. For those of us involved in research relating to older people, it is also encouraging to note the recent development of an extensive network of researchers working on different aspects of earthquake effects in terms of health. There are also many community response networks being reinforced by these most recent challenges. The massive public health issues with water, power, sewerage, and winter warmth have carried major messages for all our communities about preparedness, “making do”, safety and mutual support.
The scale of how our lives have been reconfigured through loss and sadness, courage and strength is revealed each day. As the Canterbury NZAG Committee comes out of a kind of de facto hibernation, we are still checking how our members, colleagues and friends are placed. Clearly, picking up where we left off is not an option for many people. Some are exhausted after weeks of crisis management, working in the front lines of community and residential care roles, and taking care of family and friends. Many are only now working through the longer term issues of where and how they will live, as the official recovery phase opens.
Older people are as diverse in their earthquake response as any age group, reminding us to look beyond the headlines and stereotypes which we would all try to avoid “under normal circumstances”. But these last weeks have indeed been anything but normal: extraordinary, random, surreal are all terms I hear regularly. A colleague sent me an email this week, asking simply “How are you doing?”. My response was long, rambling, tangled, messy, full of stories, some questions, second hand references. I realised I might simply have said “It’s complicated”. That’s the trouble with asking a social researcher to describe and interpret what is going on around them. Asking older people in Christchurch how they are doing will raise similar responses. Possibly a common standard would be “I’m doing OK, compared to many others who are having such a tough time”.
So, conversations do need to allow us to get behind the headlines, to understand the wide range of responses and their possible daily variations. Now is the time for listening even more carefully when asking “how can we help?”, as we start to reclaim control over our lives, making plans and decisions within the circumstances surrounding us each day. Now, more than ever, we have respect for the factors over which none of us have control – the ground beneath us, and the ageing journey itself. Our best chance is to develop flexibility, courage and strength to adapt to changing circumstances, with mutual support sensitively tailored to individual needs. How about reaffirming “Positive Ageing”?