New Zealand’s Otago Daily Times just ran a story about an adaptive ski program for disabled skiers and snowboarders, which is a pleasing piece to read if you like the idea of disabled people enjoying all the good things in life, and if you’re looking ahead to winter and are happy to see a ski story again, and if you need an excuse to look up Otago on Google Earth.
But the story gets better, because the ski hill is called The Remarkables, which is a wonderful name for a ski hill or a Pixar movie, and even more so because the place sounds sort of modest (1200 feet of vertical, 550 acres). So that’s another nice thing. It is also pleasant to read that a seniors ski group stepped up and contributed money so the program could buy a dual-ski rig for the disabled skiers. And—the coup de grâce—the name of the senior skiers group is the Ski Into the Grave Club.
I am not much of a joiner, and I might not join the Ski Into the Grave Club, but I would certainly attend a meeting or two to see if I might want to join. I’d do this because they sound like a group that leavens a dark sense of humor with a dash of human kindness (or the other way around).
It’s especially appealing after reading a recent story in the Denver Post on a group of nursing home residents who took a 10-day camping/road trip, a very good thing that evolved out of something called the “culture change movement,” which is “a national movement to transform residential facilities and services for the aging” (which you can read about here).
One thing the movement seeks to change about the culture of long term care is the way caregivers talk to their clients: the baby talk, the saccharine endearments, the patronizing “elderspeak.”
So that was an aside, a long way from skiing in New Zealand. But when you are reminded that some folks end their days in a building where the people in charge of their days call them honey or some dopey pet name in an overly gentle, high–pitched voice, then skiing into one’s grave—at the right time—seems particularly OK. A true coup de grâce.
