"It is for us the living to pick up the burdens"

In 2015 we posted A Writer on Living with Depression, an eloquent article on mental illness by a disabled person. Following is a eulogy written about his mother, Adeline Williams (not her real name) by a man who, still in his teens, was serving in the Navy at Pearl Harbor when Japan attacked on December 7, 1941. He was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and spent most of the rest of his life institutionalized. Later in life Mrs. Williams cared for him; and as she approached her nineties, he cared for her. Lincoln advised using "the very clearest, shortest, and most direct language." This is how it's done:

We are gathered here to bury the earthly remains of Adeline Williams.

In life she was a pillar of strength to all who knew her.

Twice widowed she passed on at the age of 92.

In life she was mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.

We can do no more than thank God for her life and for many of us the life she and her husbands in sequence of life gave to us.

Her life was not easy. She worked much of her life and in so doing inspired others to be creative like her.

For that we thank God for her. That she fulfilled the needs of life and gave love at the same time we are grateful to her and thankful to God who caused her to be.

We in tribute to her can do no more than treasure the memory of her and her philosophy of love.

Now we place her body in burial.

It is for us the living to pick up the burdens she in infirmity of old age and transition to spiritual existence lay down.

May God give us wisdom in so doing.

Amen

 The relative who supplied this passage wrote, "__________ as I knew him was always a kind, decent man. Schizophrenia robbed him of love, friends, marriage, children, and a career. He didn't deserve the half-life of institutionalization it condemned him to.

The eulogy he wrote showed that his spirit survived the terrible tribulations of his life. We should all honor his courage in the face of adversity."

Disability Prejudice is Often Exacerbated by Other Prejudices, Such as Race

In a current post on Slate.com, Julia Bascom notes that the emerging humanitarian safety net policies of the president-elect do not augur well for the disabled, particularly disabled people of color. Our previous blog post noted an "incident in which Trump mocked a disabled reporter." Ms. Bascom describes this and other adverse actions:

Our president-elect famously mocked a disabled journalist at a rally (and, implausibly, continues to deny what we all saw happen). But that moment isn’t what keeps me up at night. What renders me sleepless is the fear of his proposed policies: repealing the Affordable Care Act; shuttering the Department of Education; appointing a Cabinet with no regard for civil rights, safety nets, or inclusion, to be overseen by a vice president who gutted Medicaid in his state and a speaker of the House who wants to gut Medicare.

Bascom lists ways in which the current Obama administration has worked to improve the situation of the disabled:

The DOJ also clarified that the Americans With Disabilities Act applies to people with disabilities in the criminal justice system, including in the contexts of policing, prison, and re-entry into society after incarceration—badly needed guidance, given that more than 50 percent of the victims of police violence are people with disabilities, particularly disabled people of color.

and

[The Department of Education] urged schools to move away from restraint, seclusion, corporal punishment, and other forms of discipline that disproportionately target students with disabilities (particularly disabled students of color). In 2014, the department clarified that bullying can be considered a violation of a student’s civil rights, including the right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.

The marginalizing and disenfranchising of the disabled, as noted in previous posts here and here, stems in part from the social tendency to regard those who are different as somehow less than fully human. As Julia Bascom remarks, respecting the disabled involves "recognizing our humanity, our dignity, and our fundamental rights." She adds, "Trump ... sees [the disabled] as damaged goods."

Is There a New, and Worse, Climate for All Disadvantaged People?

Apologies for the long absence. A move took up much of the staff's time for a couple of months.

The following, from a recent article by Laura Wagner, may indicate that a new discriminatory climate may be in effect which affects not only minorities, women, minority religions and various gender identifications, but also America's largest minority, the disabled:

[Meryl] Streep specifically mentioned the incident in which Trump mocked a disabled reporter. She said: “This instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing.” . . . The National Review ran a column that called Streep a “moralizing hypocrite,” accusing her of choosing the “lazy method of showing empathy only for someone who shared her own ideals.”

The issue is not "empathy," it is the universal ethical standards of civility, decency, and toleration. To paraphrase "The Newsroom," how many kinds of disgusting do you have to be to mock someone of limited mobility?