I
was surprised to see a woman slumped behind the wheel of the car. My regular
walk takes me down a dirt road to a wildlife sanctuary overlooking vast
stretches of marsh not far from where this photo was taken. It’s a beautiful, out-of-the-way spot where I’ve discovered
artists capturing angled light during the Golden Hour, bird watchers, and dog
walkers. It’s a wonderful place to soothe yourself in quiet and privacy.
Finding
a car parked there wasn’t unusual. Finding a motionless older woman was.
The
small, late-model SUV had out-of-state plates and was chock full of clothes and
boxes holding papers, pictures, and other seemingly cherished items. I approached
slowly and absorbed whatever details I could. The passenger seat had stacks of food
in various states of consumption. Clothes—good quality ones with designer names
I recognized—hung on a rod suspended over the back seat. Heavy winter coats
hung next to summery blouses. The woman’s gray chin-length hair was held back
with a neat headband. She had a thick cardigan pulled up over her shoulders.
Her
chest rose and fell in a rhythm of sound sleep.
I
relaxed. All these details created a picture for me. Here was an older woman
taking a road trip by herself and stopped in a gorgeous place to have a power
nap before finding another adventure on the road.
I
have to say, I was kind of jealous of my conjured image. She fought the
stereotype of the older woman who barely leaves home alone. I imagined a
healthy woman doing something fun. She looked to have the means to grab
whatever gusto life has to offer. I didn’t feel a need to tap on her window to
disturb her nap with nosey questions or to call the police to check on her
wellbeing. The power of MYOB was strong. I convinced myself that she was fine.
But
why was her car filled to the brim? Why did she have so much food with her? Why
pack household goods for a road trip? Why was she so exhausted in the middle of
the day?
I
didn’t think much about these questions until another woman on the same road
made the local papers. Police came across the woman in the same spot. They
asked if she needed help. She responded she was fine, that she was on her way
home, and had taken a wrong turn. A wrong turn that veered off a well-marked and
paved street and went over a mile down a bumpy dirt road.
This
time, it wasn’t a sunny afternoon. It was midnight. And cold. It seems the
police were concerned enough about her “wrong turn” excuse to relay her
information to the next town’s police. Her home, the woman said, was just a few
towns away. They followed her to the town line, no doubt feeling that helping
her was as big an event they would have in their sleepy community that night.
An
hour later she was found dead in her burning car on the other side of town. An
investigation quickly discovered that she no longer lived at the address she
had given. In fact, she no longer lived anywhere.
A
pit formed in my stomach. I didn’t see these women as being unrelated to the
other. I saw them as horrible examples of a growing, yet invisible, epidemic.
Another
woman bravely tried to give voice to what I was seeing. She had become homeless
because she could no longer afford her home. She packed everything she owned
into her car and posted videos of what it was like to be an older person
without money or support. Resourceful, she found safe places to sleep in her
car. She recorded what cemeteries had working spigots where she could get water
and somewhat bathe. She talked about the struggles that brought her to
homelessness and the struggles to get out of it.
In
my cluster of coastal towns, images of the perfect life fill the landscape. It
was these images that blinded me to what the reality most likely was for the
first woman I saw. We are blinded by our bias that homelessness is not supposed
to happen to our older adults. We default to ideals. Families step up.
Neighbors help neighbors. Communities have resources to swoop in and prevent a
life’s worth of memories from filling a shoebox stored in the trunk of a car. I
have learned that in my rural oasis, over eighty older adults, men and women,
are at risk of or have lost their home because of financial fraud.
It
is a number that staggered me.
There
is a profound amount of shame that prevents awareness of this increasing
problem. Shame stems from a variety of reasons and is most potent when partnered
with denial. The older adults feel shame because they weren’t strong enough to
hold on to the brass ring of the American Dream and it slipped from their
grasp. Or they trusted the wrong person and was conned out of their money. Or
their child was too needy and took without asking. Or they were too frail or
afraid to say no. Or they didn’t see the theft until it was too late.
Each
of these reasons shames people into silence. The older adult is embarrassed
into silence and then lies to the outside world to stay wrapped in their
carefully crafted facade. The family is in a state of dysfunction because one
child took, another needs, or another sees but isn’t believed. The older person
doesn’t want to get anyone into trouble and remains increasingly isolated in
silence and fear. They just want the bad to stop but watch helplessly as
siblings war or neighbors disappear. Communities unwittingly enable the abuse
by denying that homelessness happens within their borders.
I
was in my own denial when I came across that first woman. I chastise myself for
not knocking on her window to see if she was okay or needed anything. I should
have known better.
I,
too, am watching a beloved elder be defrauded by her own child. I, too, am
cornered into silence for too many reasons to count. She’s afraid and filled
with shame, so she lies. Her lies help her keep face even as her world
dissolves.
Laws protecting elders from
financial peril exist, but enforcement is complex, expensive, and completely
impotent when shame and denial cow the victim into lying. Change needs to
happen but can only happen when we stop denying what we see.
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