It’s nearly Mother’s Day and we are all getting numerous e-mails about ways to honor our moms from flowers, to memberships in various clubs, to gifts of electronics, clothes, or what not. I, myself, bought my mom a Mother’s a present in December (when the after-Christmas sales were on). I am writing here to discourage Mother’s Day presents or Mom honoring. Moms deserve it!
But I’m disturbed by one site and one e-mail I received today. The site is an elder care residential locator website. Nowhere on the site is home care mentioned, even through studies indicate that most moms would prefer to get daily living activity support (DLAS) in their homes. All that is featured there are sugarcoated stories of institutional living and sweet pictures of adult children and elderly parents.
When my mom gets old enough to need DLAS, she’ll have support services in her own home, as I do now. Hopefully, the Community Choice Act (CCA) will be passed by then, which means she will be able to get services wherever she wants. If not, she’ll live with me until she can get her own services in Massachusetts. This situation will not please either one of us. We are very different people, with very different ideas and ideals. I don’t see that changes as either one of us ages. If this situation occurs, it will become priority one on my personal list to get my moved into her own house with services and out of my personal space.
I’ll be a Daughter from Hell to MassHealth, let me assure you. In my mind, the aforementioned organization (that doesn’t exist yet) grew out the Mother’s from Hell (a group of radical activist moms who tirelessly advocate for their children with disabilities). In my mind, the Daughters are the adult children of such moms who advocate for their moms to get independent living services as they age. One hand washing the other across generations.
In e-mail that disturbed me was from the lovely people at Care 2. They send daily e-mail exhorting people to undertake certain electronically based political action. I’m on their list. Today people were asked to send an e-mail to a “homebound, hungry mom”. I’m not discouraging community interaction with such moms in anyway, but I do have a question. If I undertaken such action, will it cause anyone to eat? The petition doesn’t tell me what good I'll do.
So, why should I, who have a busy life, the action that doesn’t seem to have positive outcome. Instead of encouraging readers to write to these hungry moms, why aren’t they advocating that readers prepare meals for their neighbors or harass their Congress people to increase funds to elder feeding programs or for more homecare services, as homecare workers could make food for these women daily and
eliminate the problem?
Just a few political thoughts from a non-mom, although I do hope to be one someday, as Mother’s Day nears.
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