Imagine being alone on Thanksgiving or Christmas; those are holidays that family members share their happiness and cheerfulness with each other.   When the holidays are near, people are getting ready by decorating their houses, buying gifts for each other, and sharing meals while the nursing home residents are sitting in their rooms waiting for visitors.  Most elders would just be happy if someone came and talked to them for an hour during the holidays.  As people age, most of them want to have a loving family and a place where they can be happy.   Imagine sitting alone in a room and looking out the window for someone to come but nobody ever does; these residents cannot do anything except to wait for someone who cares enough to visit them.  Holidays are supposed to be the times of merriment, but instead, they remind the residents of how lonely they are and they have nothing to look forward to. 

How many people have thought of getting old?  Most people have not thought of the concept of getting old.  Even if they have thought about old age, they’ve rarely thought about being neglected because they are used to being with someone and can go anywhere they want.  Who would have thought they might end up in nursing homes where no one comes to visit?  According to Lindsay Cole, the president of Young at Heart, sixty percent of the elders at Nursing Home Ombudsman Agency (NHOA) have no visitors.  They have lived all their lives taking care of others, but now there is no one who bothers to come visit them.   All they need is to be able to talk to someone to share their happiness and distress—they want to be loved. 

After Billy Thomas, the founder of the Eden Alternative—a nursing home, tried living at a nursing home for his training to become an administrator, he has finally learned how it felt to have everything taken away from him—no family, no friends, and no daily activities.  He also stated that even though he knew that he could go home after his training, he still felt lonely and helpless.  Imagine the residents who have to live there for the rest of their lives.  There are several reasons that people do not come visit these residents: people get scared of the elders, do not care about them, or their family members just want to get rid of them because their physical abilities have declined.