Mary

--> Mary

02/24/2018

After work yesterday evening Angela and I were taking a short walk in our neighborhood. After two blocks we saw an elderly woman, probably in her early 80s, attempting to cross the street perpendicular to our direction. She was having a difficult time stepping off the curb with her walker and instinctively we crossed the street to help her.

Mary (her name written on a strip of paper taped to her walker) was wearing pajama bottoms, a tee shirt, sneakers, and a long but thin sweater. Although it was still sunny, the temperature was in the low to mid 50s and there was a little wind blowing which made it feel cooler. I commented on how lightly she was dressed for such a cold day and she mentioned that she didn’t need to go too far, “just down the block”. Mary walked with some difficulty so we asked if we could walk with her to make sure she arrived safely. She was very thankful and accepted, but when we asked what her address was she said she didn’t remember, only that her house was yellow. What street was it on, I asked. She didn’t remember that either but said that if we walked far enough she’d know it when we got there.

But one more block was the end of the street, and we pointed that out to her. She was a bit confused and was getting agitated. “What street are we on?”, “What city is this?” She asked. My answers only seemed to confound her more. We asked her if there was someone we could call for her, but Mary didn’t remember any phone numbers. Or names. Or how far she’d walked that afternoon. She was weak and tired and thirsty. “Maybe it’s a good time to call the police” she said, but I was already dialing. As I stepped away to talk to the operator I over heard her say “I don’t want to go back to the nursing home” to Angela.

While dispatch put me on hold I knocked on a neighbor’s door and asked permission to have Mary sit on a chair in their porch. Instead they kindly let her in the house, helped her sit on the sofa, and gave her water and a warm blanket while waiting for the police to arrive. I had to leave but the owner of the house told me not to worry, that she’d make sure Mary was in good hands.

If, as Mahatma Ghandi said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members”, then we are pitifully inferior. We don’t provide adequate housing, medical care, and social services the elderly need for their survival let alone for a dignified retirement. We warehouse them in god-awful places where all they do is sit, hoping death comes quickly; or worse, we put them out into the street to fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, the government is itching to privatize (i.e. pillage) what’s left of Social Security, the insurance companies and their cronies in government fight tooth-and-nail to prevent a single-payer healthcare system and destroy what’s left of the Affordable Care Act, the pharmaceutical companies take every opportunity to raise prices as high as the market will bear. In short, a concerted effort to pry the last dime off the hands of the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the poor, the veterans, the mentally ill.

What a shame, on all of us!

Carlos Ovalle