Respect Seniors: Increase Funding For Meals On Wheels

We don’t respect seniors in this country, let alone make certain that they survive that portion of life. I used to work for an Area Agency on Aging where we were charged with administering various programs for senior and disabled persons in our local area. Meals on Wheels was one such program. We received both federal and state funding along with donations from wonderful supporters of this incredibly necessary program. But now that program is in jeopardy along with low-income heating assistance and other programs from the budgetary cuts the so-called new guy is recommending. Our agency was also assisted a sister agency with processing heating assistance requests for low-income applicants during the winter months. These people were our neighbors and friends, not people that should ever be thrown away like this. It gets cold on the High Desert in the winter and folks receiving this assistance couldn’t stay warm without it.

Listening to callous comments by someone named Mulvaney made me sick. My mother received daily meals when she returned home from a hospital stay one time until we could make them ourselves and bring them to her. We lived one 150 miles away and while I was at work at the Area Agency on Aging, my husband was home making individual meals for freezing along with cookies and other food for my mother until she could begin cooking for herself. But for the first few days that she was home, the local Meals on Wheels folks took care of her, taking that worry from us. We loved them for that.

She appreciated the meals she received when she arrived home from the hospital as well as the kind words and support from the Meals on Wheels volunteers who delivered them. These people fill a vital role and they are desperately needed. What we don’t need is a president who understands nothing about the lives of the frail elderly in this country while he vacations at his Florida golf course and his wife and son live in a golden tower. Respect for seniors shouldn’t be a bargaining chip in our budgetary process.

You see, we thought we would lose her on more than one occasion. She had COPD along with congestive heart failure and it was only a matter of time until she wouldn’t be able to breathe anymore. She lived long enough, however, to move to Central Oregon from the Portland area so that we could be closer to her when the final day arrived.

I saw a picture of our first lady twirling a strand of diamonds as you would spaghetti. It’s not just tone-deaf, but cruel given her husband’s shameful attitude. And she did herself no favors by suggesting that children can heal through nature when her husband wants to take health insurance away from the very people who need it the most. Not that I don’t support that line of thinking given that I’m a herbalist, but it demonstrates a disconnect from the realities we all face. All of us except for guys like him.

As more and more reductions in spending are brought forth, the tax burden is merely shifted over to the wall and war sections of the government. As if we need a wall between the US and Mexico or more war. There’s little cohesion within this new regime. It’s as if they’re grabbing this and that out of their collective a**es to scale back our government to the point of no longer functioning. While some might argue that our government hasn’t been functioning well for some time, what’s happening now is unprecedented and will accomplish nothing but harm.

My local congressman, Greg Walden, has an ad running on television extolling the virtues of his boss’s new health insurance travesty. It’s sickening to listen to him as he lies about the destructive effects of this abusive bill. The east side of the state is more rural and local hospitals and clinics are worried about how they will not only serve their patients but whether or not they’ll be paid for doing so. If this bill passes, everyone is at risk, because it appears clear now that it’s only the beginning. If the so-called new guy has his way, America will look nothing like it does now as he puts everyone at risk with his white nationalist policies.

Because that’s what all of this is about. Making our country white again. Not that it ever was, but that’s beside the point. Now those in power are about racial purity. It’s impossible to achieve, but they’ve deluded themselves anyway. Whatever drives this delusion will be their undoing but until that happens our very way of life is threatened.

The question then becomes: Will we let them get away with it?

Blessed be.