Take Care Of Our Own. Preserve Our Island Home

To the editor: I was greatly dismayed to learn that the town is considering closing Our Island Home. This would be of great detriment to our island community. All of us, if we are fortunate, will both get old and see people we love age. With luck, we will do so in good health. However, this is not guaranteed at any stage of life, most especially when people get older. Aging is often challenging, stressful, and lonely. Both for the aged and for the people taking care of them. Ensuring there is a place where the elderly and people needing rehab are able to remain in the community, near people and places that are familiar, is the act of a decent, healthy society.

Nantucket has many virtues. It offers those of us who live here many gifts and blessings. It also gives us unique challenges that require solutions that may differ from those of other communities. Our geographic distance from the mainland means family members can’t easily go visit and help care for family and friends in off-island facilities. I am aware that we are the only town in the Commonwealth that runs its own nursing home. We are the only community that needs to do so. There is no nursing facility nearby that can be reached in a reasonable amount of time for a reasonable cost, so family and friends can spend time with patients and residents in them.

No one wants to be in a nursing home. No matter how nice a place it may be. Sometimes, though, it is unavoidable. Why do we as a town wish to make this an even more isolating experience for people who may end up in one? It could be any one of you. It could be my neighbors or me. Loneliness abounds in rehab and nursing facilities. Do we really want to make it more likely that members of our community will experience even greater isolation because loved ones can’t get to them? Nantucket has always prided itself on self-sufficiency and taking care of our own. Closing Our Island Home would send the message that our town welcomes and values members of the community while they are young and able, but if age or infirmity hit, then all the good they may have done for the island is forgotten and they are to be shipped across the sound. That sounds awfully lonely, callous, and cruel. Surely we can do better.

I urge you to allow the members of the community to continue to try to find a solution to keep a nursing facility on the island. Without one, we are ripping away an irreplaceable piece of the island’s soul. Please do not vote to begin the process of closing Our Island Home. Please allow this issue to come to Town Meeting again so we may try to find a workable way to care for our own here on our island.

Thank you,
Marjory Trott

This letter was originally sent to the Select Board