Dan Krotz – It came to my attention that a late middle-aged and disabled veteran was identified as a vulnerable adult. The consequence was that a sister was awarded guardianship, along with its associated powers. Summarily, the old airman was lodged in a nursing home and the sister seized control of his assets, checkbook, etc.
Why was this man, who owned property, had savings, paid taxes, and was entirely lawful in his behavior, declared vulnerable and in need of protection? Because his housekeeping was atrocious: he failed to take out the garbage; last year’s dishes remained unwashed; roaches roamed the household range freely, and the deer and the antelope played in every corner. His personal Department of Environmental Quality was, in other words, just awful, and hardly better than its State of Arkansas equivalent.
Although competent in every other instance, a legal authority agreed with the sister that her brother was incompetent, based solely on their conflicted aesthetics. The sister’s ideas about hygiene – and, we assume, the judge’s – differed from her brother’s; thus, their aesthetic differences allowed “them” to legally toss the old vet into Dwindling Lights Storage Systems, Inc., and take away his Do-Re-Mi.
You may think these actions against the brother are unfair, but I have some sympathy for the sister. A casual walk about my neighborhood will lead you, if you have the most casual preference for washed necks and recycling, to think that a fair number of my friends and neighbors ought to be institutionalized.
Along these same lines, a visit to the Eureka Springs Hospital – surely a Third World relic despite being staffed by competent professionals – causes one to imagine that our city’s leaders must be vulnerable and befuddled adults. How else to excuse the shambles of the place? Perhaps our leaders should – shouldn’t they? – be loaded on a small bus, helped to fasten their seat belts, and taken away to Dwindling Lights.
Then again, what of the brother’s rights? Since when is a free citizen of the United States required to take a bath on Saturday night, or any night? There is no law saying you have to smell nice for snooty Yankees, or even for your sister.