I finally got around to cleaning up my living room coffee table the other day. It was piled high with mail that was neatly stacked, but not sorted, ever since the passing of my Little Lady. Not having her around to encourage me to get off of my butt and do some of these mundane necessities is not really a problem, for, on the other hand, she left me with sufficient prompting in the taking care of the things that are important to life. I just like to put some things off until the mood so possesses.
But when I tell you what I found, when the mood did so possess, there’ll be quite a number of everyday stay-at-home child rearing housewives out there, as well as stay at home self-employed entrepreneurs feeling about as comfortable as a guppy in a school of playful pike, for they are being strongly discriminated against and will so be, even after they have taken their last dying breath.
On this table of neglected junk mail, I found a flyer from an assurance company that boldly stated, “Fact: The cost of a funeral in Canada today can be more than $10,000. Fact: The Canada Pension Plan pays a maximum death benefit of just $2,500 – and only if you qualify.”
That last little “only if you qualify” is a statement that discriminates without reason or mercy against the everyday stay-at-home woman, as well as those self-employed, working from their home. The Little Lady and I, being self employed most of our lives, having not been kept abreast of the ever changing government programs, were well familiarized, after the fact, with what turned out to be a double whammy repercussion. Once bitten, twice shy.
Having been bitten twice, in beforehand fatal tragedies, we were double twice shy. So, not wanting to burden close family ties, with the only if you qualify, uncertainty, we opted for a full, prepaid funeral plan with a five year spread of payments. This we strongly recommend, for the timing of death, as highway carnage proves, lacks prediction. And the amount paid into the government coffers could well be too less to qualify, or far greater than the meagre amount received.
This is a government glitch that should well be corrected, but how long will it be before the powers that be, wake to reality and stop getting their chuckles from taking advantage of the stay at home moms, who keep their kids off of the streets, and the home-based employed, who keep their cars off the road.?
The Little Lady and I, over a 15 year span, worked with youth having to do community service, having stepped, usually for the first time, over the line of the law. One of the common denominators that most of those youngsters shared was the fact that they were latch-key kids. No-one at home to greet them from school. If there were more stay at home Moms, and Dads, to greet them, there would be fewer kids getting sucked into peer pressure havoc, as they mill and mingle, in push-and-shove clusters, on the corners of our streets.
The evolution of man has not long lost its animal beginning, but there will come a time when humanity will eventually evolve sufficient enough to become totally civilized. The time will come when our stay at home women and their cared for children will be properly recognized. The time will come when they will each be allotted sufficient funds to comfortably subsist in the multi-various manner to which they deserve.
The time will come when all property will be held in common. The time will come when the costs of living, far beyond our means, will not be pushed off as inflation, whip-lashing the backs of our coming generations. The time will come when the rich will feel guilt, exploiting their wealth, as they now do, from the poor. The time will come when the necessities of all life will be shared equally. The time will come when mankind will become, as divinely intended, human. Man’s greed retards evolution.
All teachings that neglect that aspect of humanity will fail, sooner or later, because it constitutes denial, in fact deprivation, of the divine gift that governs the heart beat of human nature in the overall scheme of things.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
