2000-07-01 - 17:10 MDT

July 1, 2000

Comparison

This will probably be short today. My mind has been thinking - - - what else should I expect of it ? Ruminating about the apparent unfairness of life. Unfairness to my eyes, I should say.

What brought the topic to mind to day for me was an essay from about.com dealing with the life and times of a man who was closely associated with Tucker ( automobile).

His life is mirrored in many ways by a large group of us. We worked hard, strove to make a life for our wives and kids - - - - got beat and battered from job to job - - - working at whatever we could find until we could latch onto something better. Many of us at the far end of our lives are crippled (not the euphemistic, "handicapped.") in bad health, with benefits run out. Thankful for receiving our sparse requirements from loving relatives. Grasping at what little entertainment we can get.

I remember my Dad, Wheelchair bound for several years. He was healing from cataract surgery on one eye and the other eye was clouded badly. His only entertainment was his TV and at the end all he got from the TV was the sound. Did you ever try to make sense out of TV when all you could do is hear the audio ? Day after day depending on us to help him through his tortured routine. The exercises I helped him with to try to keep the range of motion on limbs no longer responsive to orders from his mind. This shy, independant, dignified active old man tied to a wheel chair for all his waking hours, all day every day which must have hurt his muscles terribly. Yet he never complained, and was vocal in his gratitude for every thing we did for him.

He was well off compared to many of the people I am talking about, he had many stocks and Certificates of Deposit so that his medical care was assured, his taxes and utilities in no danger. But in the end he was in the same leaky boat as all the others. Tied, hobbled and crippled and for the most part blind totally dependant on others.

Comparison by my dull, human comprehension between the effort expended and the returns on our struggles to be a person shows to me a very unequal division of benefits to all of we peons of this world.

There of course is no solution to the eroding of bodily dissolution - - - it comes with age. Thinking back though about the stress and difficulties of surviving the travails dealt us by circumstance, the pink layoff slip, just before Christmas for instance. The refusal by the powers that be to allow someone welfare to feed their family, when they can see the well dressed Cadillac transported people coming to get the doled out commodities shows the inequality of life.

Do I have a solution ? Hardly. But it doesn't stop me from seeing those things and being in a downcast mood about it.

I guess I am my father, at my age the only thing I fear above all other things is something like Alzheimer's where the vehicle of my body is no longer occupied by the entity which drove it through life's vagaries. It could be a hell of a lot worse - - - - there is sunshine, flowers and rainbows if I just look in the right direction.

Blog