Fragments of FranceThe visitation restrictions imposed on retirement homes during the health crisis were considered inhumane by many families. Collectives, bringing together people from all political backgrounds, are trying to move the lines.
Annie Rousseau picks the last roses from her garden, this first Saturday in October, in Saint-Victor-sur-Rhins (Loire). As far as the eye can see, pastures and firs line the hills in which the village nestles with green. It was here that his revolt was born. In the spring of 2020, this trainer for the public in integration “Turns like a lion in a cage” in the large room of his little house. There is no longer any way to talk, laugh, go out – to live, quite simply – with her mother, Aimée Rousseau, a “Beating” 96-year-old cancer survivor. “I sensed that my mother was risking her skin in this matter! “, she confides. That was confirmed.
Two months of confinement in 12 m2. From March to May 2020, at the Parc retirement home in Le Coteau, a town near Roanne, Aimée is confined to her room, like most of the some 600,000 residents of accommodation establishments for dependent elderly people (Ehpad). in France. With the return of sunny days, the situation is getting better. Aimée can receive her relatives. But only by appointment, twice a week, three quarters of an hour, watch in hand, out of his room. Going out into the park is prohibited. In the common room, “We were sitting two meters from her, unable to touch her, remembers Mme Rousseau, she heard nothing because of the surrounding hubbub. It was sad to cry. “
June 15, Annie is finally allowed to bring flowers to Aimée in her room. ” Finally free ! “, she writes. In summer, the doors open. But the parenthesis closes in the fall, when the epidemic resumes. On November 5, the nursing home is confined until further notice. On January 27, her 97th birthday, at 7.15 a.m., Aimée “Bow out”, Annie says. “My mother was expecting two things : the death and the visitation of his children. You take away the visits, tell me what’s left! ”
Admitted to her bedside, a few weeks before her death, Annie read to her mother a text that she wrote to him. A “Letter to my mother confined in nursing home”. She tells him about her “Blue gaze”, of its “Words always so sweet”. She also writes: “Nobody kept their promises. Not even this president who said over and over again that the virus would not be defeated by isolating the fragile. And that there would be no new confinement for the elderly living in institutions. “
“We lived through hell”
At the time of his “Three quarters of an hour masked” at the nursing home, Annie Rousseau, 58, meets another rebel, Bernadette Ojardias, 66. “We lived through hell”, remembers this retired social worker. Her mother, Yvette, 92, confined in an nursing home in Roanne cried out, called for help, without understanding what justified her confinement. “What we gave to the elderly, we would never have inflicted it on kids. There would have been a report for deficiency ”, this specialist in troubled children is indignant.
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