Those Who Don’t Have

This morning I walked into the rehab unit and talked with the case manager.

Told her how when auntie was a little girl, her father walked out on the family, her mom got a job as a live in maid, and then put the girls into an orphanage, paying for their keep with that job. The girls, my auntie and my mother, didn’t get out for five or six years.

An old and a deep wound.

And being in the rehab is pushing those buttons.

The case manager is a nurse with years of experience, she recognized the wound as I described it, there is much hurt in this world, and people in her line of work see a lot of it, and said when the staff meet tomorrow that bit of information will be part of the mix…

That task done I drove back to the church.

All this reminded me a bit of other stories from those years, mostly of family wounds…

Probably the thing that most hurt my grandmother, if the returning over the years to that particular story is evidence, is how at some point she was accused of stealing food by her employers. She never forgot the humiliation. This was someone who was willing to do any work however degrading to support her children. She drew short of stealing. I probably would have. But, she didn’t…

Another wound. Grandma is gone. Long gone. But there is a half life to that story, a small worm in my soul.

And so I think about poverty. I think about those who minimize it. I think about those who celebrate it.

I don’t think kindly of either position.

There is no dignity in poverty. There is no grace. It does nothing to make people better.

It is just a gaping hole in the soul…

And anyone who says different is lying.