Beethoven had issues. OK, let’s admit it. He could be kind of a jerk. 

This transcendent classical composer, one of the greatest ever, was also blessed with a hot temper, bad manners, deep suspicions, dark moods and a ravenous ego. 

Definitely not the sort of humble, huggable genius you’d want to have a beer with had you been alive in the 1800s. 

But as he alienated friends, mistreated the hired help, sank into despair and wandered the streets looking like a wild man, Beethoven was concealing a terrible secret — he was going deaf. By the time he finished his Ninth Symphony masterpiece in his early 50s, his hearing was almost completely gone.

“O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn and misanthropic, how you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you,” he wrote in an unsent letter. “How could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than in others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection.”

In the face of this unimaginable loss, if Beethoven was admitted to your long-term care facility today, he would probably be incorrigible, perhaps even despised by staff and other residents. He’d wander aimlessly, ungrateful and ill-tempered, finding fault and berating those just trying to help him. 

 We wouldn’t be able to fully see or understand the feelings of fear and isolation triggered by his disability.

“I must live almost alone like one who has been banished,” Beethoven achingly lamented, probably speaking for many long-term care residents suffering in unwanted silence nearly 200 years after his death. 

The truth is, all who come to us bring a story like his — one of internal struggle, pain and loss, about which we know relatively little. All we can do is be patient. Compassionate. Forgiving.

Recognizing that every life, including our own, is a deeply flawed work of priceless art that’s still deserving of respect and kindness.

So the next time that resident lashes out unfairly and we’re tempted to judge and pull away, let’s all just close our eyes for a moment and acknowledge what he or she might have faced along the way, what they used to be and do, and the unseen losses they’ve suffered. 

Because after all, everyone is Beethoven.

From the July/August 2022 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News