Susan Swartz

I’d like to speak for the grandma camp, the people some fear
will be doomed if the president and health reformers have their
way.
Which grandmas are they trying to scare? Are they so out of the
loop they don’t know any modern grandmas? Grandmas have come a long
way since the old Saturday Evening Post Norman Rockwell image,
although despite those sweet smiles and homey aprons, I doubt even
they’d put up with much backtalk.
The grandmas I know, including myself, do not scare easy.
President Obama certainly understands the strength and value of
grandmas. In pushing for health care change, he talked about his
own grandmother, the woman who helped raise him, and whose dying he
attended. How could anyone think, he asked, that he became
president to pull the plug on grandmas?
Remember too, that he’s got a grandmother at home right now, his
mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who put her job on hold to move in
and help run the household so Barack and Michelle can do their
jobs. You think this man is going to mess with grandmas?
The grandmothers I know are much more into living than dying.
They tango dance, move to Mexico to teach English, go sea kayaking
and run marathons, not to mention their own businesses. Plus,
they’re helping to raise their kids’ kids.
A lot of grandmas have lived their lives as independent
take-charge women but they are also realists. They don’t get
nervous about someone discussing end-of-life issues. They don’t
worry about someone pulling the plug. Rather, they worry about
someone some day putting in the plug when there’s no earthly reason
to keep them going.
This thing about advance health directives? Many grandmas are
already doing it for themselves.
Many of us knew long before the cruel case of Terry Schiavo what
happens when religion, politics and family exploit a long-gone
human in a vegetative body to grandstand their beliefs. No
thanks.
Our family doctor talked to my husband and I about filling out a
durable power of attorney for health care about the same time she
urged us to get a colonoscopy. She didn’t insist but suggested that
after 50 both are smart things to do.
I am grateful for the part in my advance health directive that
says I intend to control my own medical care and would want those
who love me most to be involved were I to suffer a serious accident
or illness. It states that I want to die at home and I don’t want
any futile medical treatment.
Some people would choose a different way. But for me having an
end of life understanding feels correct and empowering, like
signing the organ donation form so that if I get hit by a bus and
there’s anything left the hospital can take my heart and kidneys
and give them to someone who can live because of me.
I was relieved when the president finally talked back to the
ghouls and said their death panel scare tactic was “simply
dishonest.” If that’s the best argument they have they’re pitching
to the wrong crowd. You can’t pull the pashmina over our eyes.
Grandmas are too tough to be victimized and too busy to be
targets. Do you think we spend every morning at the gym and popping
fish oil to let someone off us at their convenience?
Trying to scare a population of baby boomers, the loudest and
still most powerful generation, is not only insulting but
politically stupid.
And one more thing. If you look ugly and tell lies and keep
interrupting with your tantrums you’ll end up on YouTube and your
face will freeze like that.
Susan Swartz is an author and local journalist. You can also
read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear
her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is
su***@ju***********.com.