opinion
With Mother’s Day approaching, we’ve been remembering Kelcey’s grandmother, Ruth. Ruth was born in 1918, just before the influenza pandemic. She survived, but her mother soon died of pneumonia. Ruth’s father sent his children to live with relatives; Ruth and one sister lived with their grandparents on the family farm.
During the Great Depression, her family lost the farm and moved to Des Moines, where the girls sold canned goods to the neighbors. Like many members of her generation, Ruth saved anything that might be useful, even washing and re-washing tin foil. She made clothes, crocheted blankets, and froze and canned fruits and vegetables until she was physically unable to. But although her life experience led her to be frugal, she was never stingy. To the contrary, she was unfailingly generous, donated regularly to her church, and sent small gifts to any charity that asked.
Ruth rarely spoke about the flu pandemic or the Depression, but they left their mark on her personality. She was quietly resilient, patient, and kind, and almost never had a bad word to say about anyone. She embodied the commandment to “Love your neighbor as yourself” in a rare way.
While Ruth passed away more than 15 years ago, we consider the lessons she taught us as we face our own generation’s pandemic and economic disaster.
Normally in tough times, loving our neighbors means volunteering with others in our communities and holding events like potlucks (bring what you can, take what you need). In a pandemic, love looks very different: it means staying apart. There is much we do not know about COVID-19, but we do know that it is highly contagious and that we can infect others even when we do not have symptoms. To love our neighbors as ourselves -including our fellow workers, shoppers, and essential workers - is to protect them, whether they are older or younger, high risk or low risk, as fiercely as we protect our own families.
On the most basic level, that means we must stay home more and, when we must go out, wear masks and maintain physical distance. It also means we must develop and support systems that enable us to stay apart - to protect our mothers, grandmothers, loved ones, and neighbors - while taking into consideration that our neighbors also need to pay their bills and that few have the savings to do so for long without work.
Last month, our state and federal governments quickly put several measures in place to make this possible: unemployment benefits, forgivable small business loans, pauses on evictions and foreclosures, even direct cash payments. But these programs are beginning to collapse into funneling cash to the already-wealthy when they are still desperately needed by everyone else. We face calls to reopen in the face of near-daily rises in the number of cases, serious concern that we do not have this situation under control, and new evidence that the virus may be deadlier than expected to the young.
As difficult as it is, we must continue to stay apart and continue these economic programs until we have a real plan to address this pandemic. To do so successfully will require instituting hazard pay for essential workers, as Senator Romney has proposed, and making paid sick leave standard for all workers. To love your neighbor is to care for your neighbor’s welfare enough to put measures in place to ensure it. We cannot tolerate those who would “sacrifice the weak.”
It’s said that we reveal our priorities through our spending. In this crisis, as tens of thousands die and hundreds of thousands are ill, it is time to follow Ruth’s lead and shift our priorities from loving wealth to loving our neighbors. Even as we are staying apart, our priority must be to pull together and support our most vulnerable.
And if you can, call your mothers and your grandmothers on Sunday.
Writers’ Group members Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City. And biannual time changes must be abolished.
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To love our neighbors as ourselves is to protect them - Iowa City Press-Citizen
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