A toss of the genetic coin

My brother is dead. His body was found in his residence on May 12 and cremated shortly thereafter. But we just found out. That’s because my brother had a mental illness and lived on the margin of society. He was 59 years-old.

I heard the news from a sister, who heard it from our other brother, who heard it from our mother, who heard it from a stranger on the phone who had called to say they were sending a death certificate. My brother had been dead for a while before his body was found - it was mummified. There was no information about family among his possessions so it had taken time to track us down. But I guess that’s how it is when you die poor and alone. There’s no hurry to inform anyone because there’s no one to inform.

My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1970s. This was the same time that states began discharging people who posed no threat to themselves or others from state hospitals. This was not a bad thing – there was talk of sheltered employment and new housing alternatives for former hospital residents. But sufficient services never materialized, and many of these people ended up on the streets.

One Christmas shortly after he had completed college my brother came home to visit. But he was not himself.  He had a major breakdown. Following hospitalization and many months in therapeutic and supportive work programs, and medication, his condition was stable. It was now time to get a job. But what kind of work, and where? Or more precisely, who was going to hire a bright young man who walked and talked like a zombie? He had completed the available programs but there was nowhere for him to go. Yet he still had hope for himself. He thought his chances would be better elsewhere so he returned to where he had been. We never saw him again.

Why, you may wonder, did my family not encourage him to stay and assume responsibility for him? The answer to that is long and complicated but familiar to any family that has lived with an adult with mental illness. Let's just say the structure of U.S. health insurance, social service and public assistance programs do not make it easy, and many families lack the financial resources and emotional stamina to make such a commitment – providing for all material and medical needs, coping with erratic behavior, running interference with the law, assuaging other peoples’ fears, monitoring medication, and more. It can be a full-time job depending on the type and severity of the illness. Ultimately, their life becomes your life, and no one in my family was willing to give up their life for his. We cut him loose. Why no one stayed in touch with my brother is another matter, but can probably be best summed up as benign neglect.

But one person’s well-being should not require the preemption of someone else’s. We live in very punitive and selfish times: If you don’t succeed in life it’s your own fault, and don’t expect government to bail you out! I understand when unemployment is high, budgets are strained, and families are stressed, people hang on tighter than ever to what they have for fear of losing it. They are afraid and don’t know how to protect themselves. So they become defensive.

But you would think uncertainty and worry would make them more, rather than less, willing to support reasonable taxes, health care for all, and public programs that help us support each other. After all, in times of misfortune, these same programs will protect and preserve their families, too. Yet, there is not only widespread unwillingness to help other people, but denigration and outright contempt for those down on their luck. It’s a way of thinking and an ungenerous spirit I don’t understand, and one that will haunt them when trouble lands on their doorstep, as it inevitably will.

A childhood friend of mine wrote upon learning of my brother’s death: “I remember hanging out in his room, without you, looking at his fossil collection with him…There was something really peaceful about him that made me comfortable. It's too bad the toss of the genetic coin robs us of our essential nature.”

It’s important to remember: There, but for chance, go I.

© 2013 Kvick Thoughts. All rights reserved.

Obama rhymes with Ohana

As my daughter read on Twitter, à la "Lilo and Stitch":
"Obama rhymes with Ohana. Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind."

Define “poor”

A couple months ago, Fox “News” pundits pooh-poohed a survey about poverty in the United States, expressing amazement that, according to the survey, something like 90% of all poor people own a refrigerator. Fox’s rationale? If someone owns a refrigerator, how can they be poor?

A couple days ago, conservatives were at it again: Romney economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a Wall Street Journal article questioned how someone can be poor if they own a microwave oven (Daily Kos).

When I was ten, my family visited Puerto Rico. Several times during our stay we drove a causeway in San Juan over a shantytown on stilts along the banks of a dirty, marshy river. My father explained that people lived there because they couldn’t afford a house on land. Each time we took that highway, I stared at the houses and people below. I knew they were poor, yet they were fat and wore nice clothes. I was puzzled. This didn’t square with my picture of poverty. When you are poor, you're supposed to be starving and dressed in rags.

When my eldest daughter was 14, she went with a small group to Bangladesh through a project sponsored by her school. While they were there, they visited a slum in Dhaka. When she came home and talked about the visit to the slum, she was surprised that even though the people who lived there owned almost nothing, most of them had a cell phone.

I can’t tell if Fox News and Hassett are being deliberately obtuse or just disingenuous. Do conservatives really need to be told that how things look are not necessarily how things are? As a child, I didn’t know that cheap, high carbohydrate rice and beans were an Island staple and that clothing can be cheap or expensive. And things once deemed luxuries are inexpensive today, and to some people, necessities: Dhaka slum dwellers may live in shacks but they all have cell phones. Does this mean they’re not poor?

Poverty is not about the things people have. It’s about things and opportunities they don’t – nutritious food, appropriate clothing, decent housing, safety, education, and the ability to acquire these things for oneself and one’s family.

My message to Fox and Hassett?

Grow up!

© 2012 Kvick Thoughts. All rights reserved.