The Forgotten Woman

Remembering our Mothers: The Forgotten Women
I am home from another day at work and thought about the moment that I meet the lady I was to take care of for over a year now. She was turning 90 in just a few weeks, the day I walked in the door; ask by the family if I could do some light cleaning and health care for their mother. I was a full time collage student who had sworn I would never again step foot in the health care field, it was too heartbreaking, to many times the care of those I was responsible for came in second to the funding the state or government would pay for. 17 years of governmental red tape and regulations had worn thin as I watched time and time again a person’s care was minimized.
The last straw for me was the day I was told that my turning in a vulnerable adult issue to the state when one client abused had jeopardized the private company I worked for, and I was up for disciplinary actions for speaking with the parent of the abused client. The company’s bottom line came before an injured persons care. I walked, but not before I filed charges against the company.
When offered the position as a home health aid to supplement my income, I thought here is one place where money will not be placed above a person’s care. I enjoy caring for other people always have. It was one of those feel good jobs that had rewards include the feeling of doing something good for someone. I did not realize that of the 30 years I had worked in the field that this job would finally bring me the understanding and compassion for women who lived before the second wave feminist movement. This job would bring me to a new perspective of life for women who lived in my mother’s generation. This is the story of the Forgotten Woman The story of everyone who ever lived in the shadows of her husband, her children and her life.

She was a simple women, who never seemed to want much, she ask only that she have a little help with the house and having her stockings put on. She had taken care of a disabled daughter until she was 89 years of age. People wondered how she did when she could barely walk and often did not remember the day it was. I ask her how you cared for your daughter mama and she said “oh she took care of me.” In some small way I understood, for all the clients that I had had in some small way they took care of me. They were there with a smile and a hug, the touched me in a way money could never by. Yes Rose was right, they took care of me. And so our relationship began.
I was told that her family never came to visit her, although she had many living siblings they did not much care for their elder sister, in their words “she complained all the time because by the age of 8 she was caring for her 6 younger siblings and had little time for herself, she had to quit school to care for the younger ones and waited and entire year before being able to get her high school diploma. When her first daughter arrived, the doctors told her not to take her home. But this child’s mother never left the child’s side. And home this child went.
Sitting on the refrigerator is one of the few Christmas decorations she owned. She told me the story that women from the church was coming to her home and she had no decorations , so she went to the general story 55 years ago and found this little poinsettia made of pipe cleaner and wood and purchased it for a couple of nickels. That was the table’s decoration. She told me of her old rubber boots that they washed every Sunday before church with soap and water because she never had a good pair. The buckles clanked together as she walked to the midnight mass on Christmas Eve and how her grandmother kept shushing her and making more noise then the old buckle boots. She got new underwear the other week and it was purple and green. She said “where in the blazes had these come from I have never owned colored undergarments’ in my life, they don’t come clean” . She told me the only time her husband ever smoked was on their honeymoon night, he smoked a cigarette because he was bored. She told me how we were related double cousins in fact and all the family stories I had never heard.
But the one thing I will never forget is the day she ask me “did they cry for me.” That simple statement said everything about the forgotten woman and her life. She had no drivers licenses because at the time she was to get hers , her husband told her their were too many accidents and it was not safe for her to drive. The day she ask me did they cry for me, was the day she told me how no one ever comes to visit her, and if they do it is only for a minute or two. I thought it was because she just did not remember the visits but in a year’s time I found out that she was right, no one ever comes to visit her. I can count on my hand the number of times a visitor came and most of them were from my husband or her daughter. No one cries for me. It has been this way all my life why Sue do you think it will change? But this was just a rhetorical question. No need to answer. That is what she ask when I told her I had meet with her family and ask that she be given more care, that she not be left alone for hours on end with no one checking on her. Her health had declined and her memory was getting bad. She was physically losing ground fast and had left me several notes that said “Sue help me, I can’t find it, oh help me I am scared, I guess I don’t need anything to eat, I am going to bed wake me when you get here, what she didn’t remember is that those notes were written after I had left for the day and would not be there again until the following morning. When I approached the daughter in charge of her mothers cares, and showed her the notes, she became angry saying I was lying, her mother was just fine. “Did they cry for me” was all the forgotten woman, “Oh it’s okay, it has been this way all my life.”
Today I set and wonder, do we ever go to thank the women who came before us, do we put them above all else, do we even realize without them there would be no us. Do we cry for them, we who ask for equality? Or do we just use them to make another banner that asks for equality. I think as a feminist we have a lot to do before we become the forgotten women sitting in the green chair, waiting patiently for someone to come and do our cares.