Taking out Trash

 

Terrible things happened in my life in 2007. My grandmother who lived with me passed away. My mother and my great-aunt were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the same time. My great-aunt didn’t have a child. After taking care of my grandmother for so long, I needed to look after two Alzheimer’s patients.

My mother and my great-aunt have difficulty taking out trash. In Nagoya City, where we live, there are strict rules about garbage disposal. We should separate and sort garbage as burnable, nonburnable, and recyclable. Trash collection depends on the day of week. If you take out the wrong trash on the wrong day, they refuse to collect. Even I forget or mistake the day. For Alzheimer’s patients, it is almost impossible to take out trash.

My mother and I lived together, so I took out the trash. But my-great aunt lived alone. Her house was full of trash. I visited her house every week to separate and sort the trash little by little. In summer, I put the bag of garbage in the refrigerator till collection day.

It was very difficult to make her take out trash. All had to be taken out by 8:00 a.m. It took me one and a half hours to get to my great-aunt’s house. I couldn’t visit her almost every morning, so I called her every day to remind her.

But it was not easy. Even if I called her, she could forget taking out the trash after hanging up. So I used to say, “Hi, Great-Aunt, today is collection day. I will wait till you take the trash out before hanging up. Please do it now.” Usually, she forgot I was still on the phone. I had to wait a very long time. But at least she could take out the trash.

The Nagoya city government is doing this complicated garbage collection system for recycling. Our slogan is “Be kind to the earth.” But this system is not kind to Alzheimer’s patients. How can we be a society that is kind to both?

Picture by makaron