All those cuts to Meals on Wheels apparently went out over the last 24 hours or so.
So let me tell you, gentle reader, of the last 48.
Yesterday, I began to track down the family of a senior who died five years ago when mail showed up for her estate. Yes. They died in the first covid wave, amidst so many others. And disappeared.
Today, I delivered a route, as I always do when a delivery crew fails to show. Someone who I'd spoken to on Monday didn't answer when I knocked. Thinking they might not yet be home, I called their contact number and got family. Poor man was on total life support, surrounded by loved ones.
He died while I was on the line. I spent the next twenty minutes consoling half a dozen people I've never met as they broke down together.
This is the stuff they're taking away the funding for. Not hard to guess why- beyond the simple cruelty and ignorance, at least. Hungry people get angry, they get aggressive, they get things happening. People like this don't. They're already on the last of their resources. They'll simply fade and die, unknown and forgotten. Often, I joke that the motto of our center should be "Forgotten But Not Gone". I don't forget easily.
"To ignore the plight of those one could conceivably save is not wisdom, it is indolence"
In a world steeped in malice, I think those words ring true for those who seek a better world.
Why? Simple.
"For those we have lost. For those we can yet save."
And so I battle onward. As best I might.