Still here

It feels like it's been five years, not just over five weeks.  Missing Mom is now settling into my bones as a fact of life.  I still cry, and in public, but not quite as much.  I guess it's progress.

As I've said before, there are unfortunately a number of things about which I could be supremely bitter, but I've largely managed to avoid it.  I know that it won't do me any good and that it won't bring her back.  Health care, though ... it makes me want to throttle some of these ignorant, selfish, and uncaring people who rant about not needing health care reform.  

All that insurance companies and managed care has done in the past twenty years is to turn medicine even further into a money-making service, completely warped from the purpose of caring for people.  Greed - from the greed of those who make money off of suffering to the greed of those who have no thought for others - has made the current system a travesty.  The small businessmen like those Mom and I have worked for claim not to have the money to provide insurance.  The have second and third homes, fancy cars, and maids to clean their houses, but no money.  If you work and own a home, like I do (and Mom did), then you don't qualify for any help.  

And since Mom already had high blood pressure, she was turned down from private insurance (that would have been horribly expensive) because under the system, you couldn't already be ill, because then, gods forbid, the insurance company would actually have to give you some of the care you were paying for.  It's a truly pathetic commentary on American society to have some of the best health care in the history of the world theoretically available, yet inaccessible by a large part of the population.  

Health care is NOT supposed to be the privilege of the wealthy.  While in all honesty, I can't say for certain that even the best care would have saved my mother's life, it is a horribly bitter pill to even have the faintest thought that, if we have been rich and could have afforded all the tests, scans, and  hundreds of dollars of medicine each month, she might still be alive.  I devoutly wish I could impose that feeling on every opponent of health care reform, with the person in need being one of their loved ones.

And yes, that is a digression, of a sorts, but it's part of what I deal with.  My mom deserved so much better, and I can only pray that she is now freer and happier than she was on this plane.  As always, Mom, I miss you so much.