[A touching email in response to one of my columns, about finding assisted living for my mother:]

 

“Dear Margie, I hope you don't mind my response to your Buzzflash posting.

I am one of the millions of other women your age - offspring of parents raised through the depression and who came of age just as WWII threatened.  Last summer, on the eastern shore of Maryland, I threw out my own mother's collections of plastic butter containers - so you don't have to buy Tupperware - rubber bands and twisties. (That made me smile. . .you must have known my mother!)  I, too made the rounds of assisted living facilities, talked to elder care advisers and finally found a place out here in CA where Mom would eventually move in. It was hard for her, even with her dementia, since she was always a woman of independence and had lived alone for almost 20 years after my dad died.

It is one of the most difficult things I've ever done - moving her out here, having to be the parent and watching her drift away. I am grateful she can still laugh. I'm grateful I have found a place where there are activities every day and people to talk to even if none of them can quite remember what the conversation is about.

I am also grateful for federal government, and very strict CA state regulations of the care she is given. Reagan had the money (how much did he get for those "lectures" he gave in Japan and elsewhere right after he left office!!) to stay at home and have caregivers come in. What happened to those of us who don't have that option wasn't a problem for him.

I want the caregivers and the facilities that house people like my mother monitored by government.  I am glad they have to answer to our regulations. Otherwise we would be at the mercy of big business who would run these places with the bottom line more in view than my mother's smile.

I just wanted to say thanks for your piece today. It struck a chord. I hope you continue to write on this topic.”

 

 

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

 

I can remember Reagan campaigning on the slogan -- lifted from Howard Baker, GOP pres candidate from Tennessee – “Let’s get government off the backs of the people.” Obliviousness to the principle that in America, the people are the government, aside, I also remember the Dems in Congress largely rolling over for that one, partly because of John Hinckley.

 

Getting government off the backs of old people’s homes, so they can do whatever they want to with the helpless in their care, is demonstrably not a good idea. Ditto for getting govt off the backs of the banks and insurance companies, so they can do whatever they like with your money; off the backs of hospitals, clinics and pharmaceuticals, so they can ignore or sport with your health; and off the backs of military and “security” contractors, so they can purvey weapons and land mines around the globe at imminent risk to our national security and future risk to our troops and to all Americans abroad.