The Casual Cruelty of “Just Joking”

A colleague recently said to me, "I would have just dumped him in a home... nah, I'm just joking-I probably would have done what you're doing." They laughed. I didn't.

What struck me wasn't the statement itself, but how casually it was offered, as if the idea of abandoning an elder, a parent, a human being, could be tossed out and retracted with a joke. As if the weight of that choice were light enough to play with.

People say things like this when they haven't had to make the decision.

When they haven't sat beside a hospital bed watching someone they love become frightened by fluorescent lights and unfamiliar hands. When they haven't learned that "care" isn't just a servic...it's a relationship, a presence, a kind of witnessing.

For people from some socioeconomic backgrounds there is a assumption that if care becomes hard, it should be outsourced. That institutions are neutral. That distance is safer. But for people like my father, who becomes disoriented without familiar faces, whose body is fragile, whose dignity is easily compromised..presence isn't sentimental. It's protective.

What bothered me most wasn't that my colleague could imagine a different choice. It was that the idea of abandonment could be floated so lightly, then dismissed with a laugh, as if saying just joking erased the truth underneath: that this society is deeply uncomfortable with dependency, aging, and vulnerability.

Caregiving exposes that discomfort. It forces people to confront things they'd rather keep theoretical...llness, decline, responsibility, love that doesn't get easier over time. Sometimes humor is used as a shield against that discomfort. But when the shield is sharp, it cuts.

I don't need to be told I could have chosen differently. I already know that. I choose this anyway.

Caregiving isn't martyrdom. It isn't sainthood. And it certainly isn't o punchline. It's a series of deliberate decisions made in real time, guided by what keeps another human being safe, oriented, and seen.

The cruelty isn't always loud.

Sometimes it arrives as a joke.