A 95 year old cowboy on Medicaid
The comments that Mitt Romney made earlier this week hit home to me in a very passionate way. I was highly insulted by what Mr. Romney said about people not taking responsibility. His comments are personal to me, and it's taken me this long to calm down enough to be able to write about it.
Two years ago, my father died at the ripe old age of 95 years. He lived a good life, a decent life and a respectable life. He was my hero. He was one of the last of the real cowboys. Trained horses, trained dogs, cut cattle - all that was required for a rancher's way of life. We lived in a rural area. Small town. We didn't own the ranch, but running the ranch was the job he did for someone more fortunate. He was good at it and he did his job well.
To my knowledge, my family was never on any kind of public assistance. We didn't have much and we did without a lot of things that other people had. But my father considered us pretty well off considering some other people that he knew who really did need some help. Like for instance, the woman who's husband had died from cancer and needed meat every once in a while for her family, so my father would take her some deer meat. Or the single woman whose son was getting into trouble in town, so he came and lived with us and worked on the ranch to learn some discipline. This was an arrangement that my father had worked out with the local county judge to keep this boy from going to jail, and the judge allowed this because of my father's reputation for being an honorable man.
My mom passed away when I was eight.
My dad retired on Social Security and a modest savings in his late 60's, no longer physically able to keep up with the demands of ranching.
But how does one go about preparing monetarily to live to be 95 years old? Social Security barely got him by, and sooner rather than later, his savings gave out.
His children helped where and when they could, but none of us are wealthy. We all have jobs that we had to go to every morning to be able to help at all, and by the time we met the needs of our own families, there wasn't much left.
My dad lived alone for as long as he could. Then he had a little bit of help with home health aid, etc., but nothing that really took care of things. The social services people kept telling us that he had too much to be eligible for help. And he didn't have anything.
The last year of his life, this proud man spent in a nursing home on Medicaid. He'd finally met the poverty qualifications. He required care that could only be handled by medical staff. He'd gone into the home, initially, on the rehab clauses under Social Security. At first, he had a room to himself. A decent room, with a door and a window. But after that time frame elapsed, he was moved to the "medicaid ward".
I remember my first visit after he'd been moved. He was in a tiny room with another man who had breathing problems and the sound was horrible coming from the poor guy. It was the most depressing atmosphere that I think I've ever seen. I knew that my father's life was over. He might have still been breathing and talking, but the life in him was gone. I know that you're not supposed to be able to walk into a nursing home and tell who the paying patients are versus those on Medicaid. But trust me, it was quite obvious.
I came back to work every day with the rich people that I work for asking me how he was doing. I always just said "as well as can be expected" because there are some things that rich people don't get, and they aren't going to get until it happens to someone that they love. And it won't happen to their families. Because they have more than enough.
They will never understand the pride, the honor and the grit that my father had. They will never understand how very responsible he was. How he did without so that others would have. How he raised his kids, conducted himself, and taught them by example. The rich just won't ever get it.
They won't ever get it because it's something they are not capable of. In their world, the rules are bent in whatever way their conscience needs those rules to be bent so they can lay their head on their pillow at night without believing they've ever done anything wrong. They justify what they do one way or the other
But in my father's world, what was right was right. And what was wrong was wrong. And as his child, I refuse to ever forget that.
So, Mr. Romney, you bet your ass I am one of the 47%. I am one of those people who will be voting for Barack Obama the first day of early voting. I would never consider voting for a rich sob like you who just doesn't get it. I can smell what you are from miles away because I have the perception that my father taught me about people. I will be voting that day with a smile on my face and I will be doing it for my father's memory, and the memory of others just like my father who have made this country what it is - generation after generation.
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excellent people like him.
Your father, bless his heart, was part of the salt of the Earth. Part of those whose quiet contributions keeps everything turning, everything working. Rmoney is part of the parasitical class, those that do not contribute, but only take, those that live off the accomplishments of others.
Bless your heart.
very, very moving. i hope you are sending this out to a much wider audience.
The OP should publish.
and going to Facebook. 
