Skeleton doormat upsets some at retirement home

You go in alive and come out dead. That's the message on the doormat outside the entrance to a nursing home in Lund, southern Sweden. To the left, with an arrow pointing in saying enter, is a very much alive person. On the right, with an arrow pointing out saying exit, a skeleton.



"I think it's very macabre. Many of those who live there are very old and may not have long to live, I find it distasteful and unseemly," says Emelie Nilsson who through her work in home care services visits the accommodation.

She is unsure how long the mat has been outside the home, but says that it has been there for several weeks. "It is most distasteful, it does not feel fun at all," says another woman who regularly visits the home. Besides sheltered accomodation the building is also used as a meeting place for seniors.



Doris Bergin, activity coordinator at the meeting point, says it is the residents themselves who put the mat outside the building. "We have no responsibility for the doormat and don't find it find it nice at all. We've thought of throwing it away, but it has come from one of the residents of the home. It was just suddenly there one day," she says.