Poverty and Seniors Amongst Us!

POVERTY AND SENIOR CITIZENS - I'VE SEEN IT UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

MY PARENTS WORKED UNTIL LATE IN LIFE - COST OF LIVING, DRUGS, RETIREMENT DRAINED THEIR RESOURCES

     Ed was one of those old-school fathers, of the fighting Irish, who wouldn't admit he had feelings. If he ever cried, he certainly did so in privacy. I know as a kid he cried. Probably a lot. His father Eddie Sr., took off and left his wife Doris, with four young lads, renting a tiny house in Toronto's Cabbagetown. She suffered many emotional crashes, and would take the boys to the park, and then quietly slip away, knowing that eventually the city welfare department would come to the rescue. Ed and his three brothers spent a fair bit of time in orphanages, and living in foster homes. Eventually their mother would recover, and come back for them, and things would get better for awhile. Until the next time.

     My dad's father was a loner and a boozer, but my Ed cared for him dearly. I know that now. I remember one day, asking my mother, why Ed used to read the obituaries in the daily paper. I didn't know about obituaries until he explained it to me, while I was looking over his shoulder as he read. Merle told me he was looking for his father's notice. I had a lot of questions at the time, but Merle just told me to keep quiet about it, as my father was pretty sensitive about his own family matters. His dad, at this time, was still alive, but he wouldn't try to contact him. His last meeting was going to be after death. He didn't want to face his father in life. But felt he could do so after death. There were a lot of issues, I assumed, between Eddy Sr. and his son. A lot of questions he had, but emotionally, didn't have the courage to ask, face to face. He could have, but declined.

     At this time, of the late 1960's, he would only talk to one brother, of three, and the youngest, Bill, had been institutionalized with serious emotional problems. Ed suggested to Merle, once in a whisper, Billy's problems were from the abusive foster parents, where they had been forced to stay. I never brought up the subject. Even in the last few chats before his own death, Ed refused to reminisce about his father…..other than to tell me the old man liked buttermilk, and could eat a potato or onion raw. So the only mental picture I've got of my grandfather, is of this little Irishman sitting on the steps of his Cabbagetown hovel, eating a raw onion, and wincing when his eyes started to sting. I know he was a fighter like his son, and probably had those knots and lumps on the bridge of his nose, that my dad wore proudly. They were "dukes-up" kind of guys. Knock the guy out first, and ask questions about the nature of the off-hand comment later. As a young man, if anyone had said anything off-color to my mother, Ed would have started a fight. I heard from others, that he was proficient, in the honor department, of setting a smart-ass down to the ground, with one punch to the jaw. Ed looked a little like Popeye, especially with his sailor's uniform on.

     Ed one night brushed by me on the stairs of our apartment, up on Bracebridge's Alice Street, yelling back at me, that he had to go to the city for business. I wanted to go. He said he'd take me next time. Merle had tears in her eyes when I got to the apartment door. It seems Ed had finally found his father. He was resting in a funeral home in Hamilton. No one had claimed Eddie's body. He died penniless and was going to be given a funeral courtesy the Royal Canadian Legion, I believe, as he was a veteran of the Second World War. Father and son served in the war, but my dad hadn't seen his father in many years by the time he enlisted. I know Ed was pretty upset when he got home later that night, and he wouldn't say anything about what had happened, as long as I was hovering around. I went out and gave them a chance to talk. Merle told me later, that the funeral home hadn't even cleaned his father's finger-nails before embalming him, and they didn't do much more than was necessary to move the funeral process forward. Ed paid his respects, and he may have cried then, but I have my doubts.

     Ed's nose had been broken about six times over his life, and he probably had it re-arranged twice while he served in the Royal Canadian Navy, aboard the ship Coaticook. He was a gunner and he shot down German planes, but he would never discuss how many, or how he felt about doing so. He had rescued sailors die in his arms, as they pulled victims from the North Atlantic, after U-Boat attacks on the convoys. He did tell me how awful it was, on occasions, when there were sailors overboard, from a torpedoed ship, but the Captain could not risk stopping to rescue them, as it would expose the rest of the merchant ships they were protecting from attack. "They used to try to salute us as we were going by…..their faces black with oil, and soot," he'd say. He said they would yell, "Get Hitler for us!" Ed was damaged by war, like many other soldiers, sailors and airmen, who saw so much tragedy up close. Sometimes even as close as their cradling arms. When I tell you my father was tough, it was only from a son's perspective. He was good at hiding what bothered him. It's why he drank, and sometimes too much. He told me once, that he could still see the faces, so clearly, of the lost crewman, waiting to die in the North Atlantic. He'd only bring this up if he was numb with booze. Even then, it was always a short conversation.

     When my mother had her second stroke, and a heart-attack during a bowel operation, Ed was devastated. Merle had experienced dozens of serious ailments from childhood, including a near-fatal bout with rheumatic fever, which enlarged her heart. Old Doc. Eaton, of Bracebridge and Dr. Sergeant, of Huntsville, saved her life when she was in her late forties. Dr. Eaton said to her, candidly, "I fear for your longevity." She used to kid about that, because she lasted for many more years, because of their work on her behalf. She was a fighter. Merle loved the simple things in life, and when she and Ed retired, within a year or so of each other (Merle retiring first), they lived modestly, enjoyed their daily motor trips, looking after our boys, Andrew and Robert, and loved every holiday, Christmas especially, where we'd all gather while Ed cooked up a great meal. Merle's health was managed by a fist-full of pills every day. Ed had gout, and self medicated. He did it so thoroughly once, he nearly killed himself, with over the counter pain medication and Vodka. He was working in Parry Sound at the time, and at an after-hours even for his lumber company, co-workers had to hustle him over to the hospital, as he kept collapsing. They'd pick him up, he'd dust himself off, and then hit the floor again. The problem with my father, and it did contribute to his death, was that he was stubborn beyond belief. He hated the pain of gout, and he knew what not to do, or drink, to avoid irritating it, but he loathed going to the doctor or the hospital. That's why, when he had a stroke himself, several years ago, he thought it was an inner ear problem, because he kept falling down in his apartment. He lived with the untreated stroke for three days, even turning away neighbors who tried to help him, until we finally wound up at the apartment, and by this point, he was in terrible shape, and wouldn't recover.

     After Merle was hospitalized, and it looked as if she would never come home again, Ed started to panic. I thought it was about losing his fifty-plus year partner in marriage. Well it was, but Merle was at least still alive, and would be for three more years, living at The Pines. The crushing issue, was explained to me, while having coffee with him in a local restaurant. I'd never seen panic in my dad's eyes before, and our family had been in all kinds of precarious situations, usually when Ed would unceremoniously quit his job, over a matter of principle. I'm the same. This time was different. He confessed to me that he was not only broke, but deeply in debt. I don't know if you can imagine this, but I had always assumed they had been in reasonable financial shape, and living sensibly in an affordable apartment. What Ed explained was that, since Merle had been hospitalized, he had been doing the bill paying, and found she had mistakenly, been paying credit card bills with credit-line cheques. For months. Merle had been a bank employee for much of her young working life, and Ed trusted her to keep them on the straight and narrow financially speaking. She always had, at least during the time I lived at home. She'd been slipping into dementia slowly. The first time I noticed it, was when I came by for a coffee, one day when Ed had gone to Toronto, to sort out some estate details for his own mother…..who lived to almost one hundred years of age. Merle was sitting at the dining room table, with a cup of tea and a couple of pieces of toast. She got me a coffee, and we started to chat about Ed's trip. I started watching as she kept applying peanut butter to the toast. By the point I looked at her, there was about an inch of peanut butter. I asked her why she was putting so much spread on her toast. "Oh dear, I didn't even want peanut butter." Ed admitted later, he had noticed this but wrote it off to old age, and not dementia.

     What had been happening, is that because Ed always found there to be ample funds in the personal account, after the bills were paid, he got a little reckless himself, and spent money he shouldn't have. Merle thought she was writing personal cheques, when in fact, she had been running up credit-line bills. Ed said she'd even tried to pay credit line bills with the same credit line cheques. What happened after only six or so months, was that they wound up owing about twelve thousand dollars, with very few resources, and just enough pension money to get by, month to month. Not all of Merle's medicine was covered by OHIP, at the time, so it was a drain on their fixed incomes. The real crushing reality was, that Ed knew Merle was going to need long-term care, and it would require that her pension cheques would have to diverted for accommodation fees. He wouldn't be able to survive on only his pension, even with a supplement.

     My heart was in my throat that morning. Here's this tough, hard working, former sailor, who never asked a favor in this life, now asking me for a solution to a problem that was now imminent, without any wiggle room. I don't think he wanted to tell me at all, except he needed to let me know, he was going to be moving, as soon as he found a room to rent in town. Merle and Ed had a beautiful two bedroom unit in the Bass Rock apartment, in Bracebridge, that was well maintained and close to everything my parents needed at the time. Ed's biggest concern, was that they were both going to die, and be unable to afford their own funerals. He wanted, at that moment, for me to agree to take everything of value he had, in the apartment, as my inheritance. I'm an only child, and he felt it was obligatory to leave me something of substance. Cripes, I was put into the most devastatingly difficult position I'd ever been in, and there was no quick fix. I told him I wasn't going to take anything from the apartment, and he wasn't going to be moving anywhere, as the apartment was convenient and affordable. We just had some details to work through first.

     The truly difficult situation for Ed, was that he had to apply for financial assistance for Merle, when she was admitted to The Pines. Even with acceptance, and her residency costs whittled down, Ed still had to pay money from his own pension, on top of losing all of Merle's pension money, as they had shared for years; and this put him into serious financial disadvantage. We had just put a huge amount of money into Andrew's first business venture, which would come to include Robert, and there was little money left to rescue my parents. I think my dad really did think they still operated "debtor's prison," like in the days of Charles Dickens. It took a massive change of lifestyle, for all of us, to straighten up the financial mess. It took four years and incredible patience. Ed didn't want us to see his accounting, and I did worry he wasn't being straight with us, about the progress he was making, repaying the debt to two major banks. We helped out with groceries and when Andrew was taking a federally funded "young entrepreneur's" course, in Bracebridge, he stayed with Ed, and we paid a rental fee to help offset costs. In fact, Andrew spent three years with Ed, and that was his first guitar workshop. The kitchen table at Ed's. He had no distractions, and he and Ed enjoyed each other's company. It kept Andrew focused, and Ed from getting too lonely. It also put some money into the coffers and over time, Ed was able to make some lump-sum payments, to level the old fiscal playing field.

     When we were settling Ed's estate, and Suzanne looked after all the accounting, and paperwork, she called me over to her spot at that same kitchen table, one afternoon shortly after his death, to show me something astonishing. At least we thought it was, considering the turmoil of a few years previous. Ed had been keeping an accounting book, from the point of our first conversation about debt recovery. He had narrowed his debt at two banks, down to just over three thousands dollars, and when everything was said and done, he left his family ten thousand dollars. Almost to the nickel, of what we had given him as rent during Andrew's three year stay. He had worked steadfastly, to fix his problem. This is a guy, who graduated high school in his seventies. It was on his bucket list. Due to family problems, he had only finished public school, but had never gone to secondary school. He decided in his early seventies, to correct this, and over about four years of correspondence-school studies, he was awarded his high school diploma. He only told us about this, when he could actually show us the diploma. I guess he figured it might jinx it all, if he told us before he passed all his courses.

     Ed didn't do without much, because we were there for him, at the most critical time. There are thousands, if not millions of Canadian seniors, who don't have family to fall back on, and are living in poverty and crisis, finding it hard to reach out for help. They just do without. We even helped Ed set up a balcony garden to grow some vegetables, which he adored tending, and every August he and Suzanne would start preserving (putting down fresh produce), getting ready jars and jars of salsa, chili sauce, chutney, pickled carrots and beets, to benefit from, during the winter season. He loved doing that kind of work, and he was a brilliant cook himself. We set him up with a pantry, and helped him fill it. He certainly wasn't going to starve, even if he only had enough money to make rent. He liked his weekly case of beer. We made sure the budget had some flexibility for this little pleasure. He figured he'd just spend less on clothes. He lived very frugal for the rest of his life, and after worrying, he would have to declare bankruptcy, early on, he made a fantastic recovery. Even though we had talked often about his financial progress, he would never reveal just how much improvement he'd made. So when Suzanne found out that he had pulled himself back into the black, we realized he had done what he'd been doing his whole life. He became very good at the art of "recovery." I was proud of my parents because they gave me a good life. A safe existence. I ate well and we even got some vacations. They led by example. We had what we could afford. We were always the last family to get things. It wasn't until I was a teenager that Merle insisted we buy a record player in a nice wood cabinet. She had to buy it on time. But it was out of her household money. But I certainly didn't suffer any great hardship because they were careful with their money.

     Ed, like many of us, was too proud to ask for assistance. He only told me about his problem, when he thought it was going to be necessary to move from the apartment he and Merle had shared at Bass Rock. I'm wondering if he would have commenced a bankruptcy application, if he had decided not to break the news to me that morning, he didn't have enough money to buy breakfast. He had lived a hard life and knew what it was like to be poor and homeless. Here he was at the end of his life, a veteran of the Second World War, a former manager of a major lumber company, down to his last buck in spare change, and a debt load he couldn't cover. He really did fear, at the moment, I think, that he was going to wind-up like his father, having to be buried by charity, maybe even in a pauper's grave. Merle used to tell me, it's what Ed worried about, even when I was a kid, and death seemed something that happened to other people, but not my parents. He didn't wind up in a pauper's grave, and I hope he was proud of the changes he had made in his life, in those last few years. For every one who can manage to get out of economic crisis, there are many more who mire even deeper, without any hope of rescue.

     My mother has just now done a summersault in the afterlife, knowing I'm about to share this story with you. Ed wouldn't be happy either, but he knew how many others were in a similar situation, because he visited with spouses of residents, while Merle was in care…..and they talked about each other's precarious situation on the outside. As Ed had a social conscience, he would like to know his story, and my mother's, would bring some small amount of clarity, to a growing problem in our country. One I'm pretty sure is even more precarious than it was five and ten years ago, without any major changes to turn fortunes around for those with pressing needs. The government sees this only as a statistic, and they interpret it, from the safe distance of a civil service office, and offer their political masters, interpretations based on what the manuals tell them is within bounds, and in essence, "acceptable circumstance." That acceptable circumstance for these folks, in crisis, is more of a "hell on earth." Yet so many seniors today are facing this new normal…….vaulting helplessly into a downward spiral of poverty they aren't familiar with, or know how to extricate themselves. Many, like my father, are too proud to ask for financial assistance, or to ask for help at all. There are seniors in our town right now, who are underfed, under-nourished, who can't look after themselves properly, have inadequate housing, don't have the money for certain medical supplies and equipment, and who can't afford their medication. Who are they? Someone knows. But most of us don't, until it's too late. They become another statistic, this time, the final one. There are social advocates for some, but not all.

     The amount of money wasted on the recent air ambulance debacle, in this province, makes my blood boil, because there are so many souls living without, who could have benefitted from these same squandered resources. What does out provincial leadership do? "It's not our fault." "We didn't know." "We weren't aware of that." My father and mother took the bullet for their actions, and their decisions. They only ever asked for what they were entitled. Not one dime more. Even if that meant doing without. They were both proud, and had come from an era, when you "toughed-it-out," and found a way to avert a crisis by being creative. Like the times Ed used to have to chase the milk man and his horses down the road, to gather up the poop, for his mother's garden, and indeed, gathering up any scattered coal from the delivery carts. So even if he had been offered a gift of cash, from some benevolent friend, he would never have accepted it, even when down to his last buck. He wouldn't even ask me for help. He'd work for it! Damn right. Even when his body was giving out, he'd have turned over our gardens, to earn his stipend. I'm not sure what he would say, with the life he had led, reading about the millions lost by the province, because no one apparently gave a crap. It's just money right? What galls me today, is how this provincial government can talk about austerity. If ever lightning should strike, as my mother would say, it should strike them.

     If you know a senior in crisis, whether it is a case of profound loneliness, or financial in nature, there are new resources to help out. The first issue, is to identify the crisis.

     My parents never felt hard-done-by, and didn't blame others for their misfortunes. They lived a life together for more than half a century, worked hard, saved, and by all accounts, kept their heads far enough above water, to feel modest security. The cost of living, and medical expenses changed all that. Merle when on a spending spree because of ill health, and boy oh boy, that nearly sunk the ship. Their story isn't unique or special. It is average. It is what is happening out there, and with the increasing number of senior citizens, according to latest census results, we can expect this will become the most pressing health and welfare issue for the foreseeable future. Is it a crisis? How would the politicians ever find out? Even if they did, history shows, well, "crisis" means different things to different folks. I don't put a lot of faith in both levels of government to come to the rescue. That only happens in the picture shows.

     Thank you so much for visiting today's blog. Please join me again soon. I enjoy our time together. Readership is growing. This is pleasing.