Sunday, May 10, 2015

Michael Harris' Moving Mother's Day Story



Well today is Mother's Day which is a good day for florists, and yet another good excuse to tell your Mum you love her.

And I see that Stephen Harper is using the occasion to make us believe that he's on their side.


But I'd rather think that Mother's Day is every day of the year, and remember all the mothers, especially single mothers, he has done nothing to help.

Or as Michael Harris writes, remember the mothers Harper's Army has betrayed. 

Sometimes neither the pen nor the sword is mightier. Sometimes only compassion will do. I learned that lesson again when I walked into the living room of a couple whose name I cannot give you to discuss the plight of their son, who must for now remain anonymous. Two hours later, both of them in tears, strong people weeping, I knew I had to do something.

Or treated their wounded children with abominable cruelty.

Drug addiction begun in Afghanistan morphed into a reliance on painkillers. His marriage disintegrated and he began sleeping in the closet. He was overcome with the irrepressible conviction that something had gone terribly wrong inside. He presented himself to his base commander with a confession of illness and a plea for help. Tears were caged behind his father’s lashes when he told me the response his son received. “The commander told him he would give him fifteen minutes to resign.”

Like they have so many others.

Sometimes the middle-aged couple gets 20 calls a day from their distressed son. They are the only people he can talk to and like all parents, they do what they can. The visits to the military hospital are painful not only because of their son’s condition, (he has wasted away with pneumonia) but because of the look on the faces of the other young soldiers there with him. 

“It’s in their eyes,” his mother tells me, “a look that everything has been taken from them, a terrible emptiness.”

You know, as I've said so many times before, thanks to Stephen Harper I don't recognize our country or our army.



But I'll get back to that later, and what we have to do to get both of them back. 

Right now I'd just like to wish all the mothers of Canada a very special day.

Let's work to make raising children easier.  Let's make daycare more available and more affordable. Let's fight domestic violence, and respect women's rights.


Let's celebrate mothers every day of the year....

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10 comments:

  1. jolly roger9:11 PM

    I work with army and air force people every day and their pissed at harper to no end -- the bigger picture is get back the BANK OF CANADA - PUBLIC bank - (COMER.ORG) AND STOP STEALING OF THE rotten government criminals and I don't mean maybe ),---demand this from your area rep for the federal government next election to brings back our NO INTEREST bank loans and let's get on with it.. our vets and poor will get the help they need to stay part of the Canadian democracy .........

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    1. hi jolly roger...I know a lot of vets are still outraged by what the Con regime has done to them. I share that outrage, and that scene in the hospital Harris describes will haunt me for a llong time, and only makes me angrier...

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    2. I'll look at that Comer website when I get a chance. I' usually avoid anything to do with banks since I can't even do my own taxes, but when I'm feeling unusually brilliant I'll take some time to check it out...

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  2. Jolly Roger I am with you all the way Canadians all of us need to do an about face. I am well aware of COMER and support Rocco Galati and ex-minister of defense Paul Hellyer. Since Trudeau Senior quit borrowing from the Bank of Canada we have paid over one trillion dollars in interest alone since 1974. Plus we still owe more than six hundred and fourteen billion plus. How dare Harper lie and say he has a balanced budget?

    Okay that is like me saying I have a balanced budget when I have ten dollars in my jeans and I owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars but I only make ten dollars a month. So where does this childish lying bullshit come from? Steve Joe Harper and his minions in the PMO's orifice...

    Cheers JR,
    Mogs

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  3. I sense that Michael's story is just one example of many. Wait until the HEALTH CARE BOMB hits and many more patients will be sent home via taxis!!!!

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    1. hi kathleen...it is just one example of many. And the brutish way our military is handling the situation is absolutely unforgivable...

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  4. e.a.f.8:19 AM

    Mother's Day, just another day not on Steve's radar if your Mom is a dead First Nation's person. Steve needs to remember the 1,200 murdered/missing First Nations women were daughters and Mothers. Some Mother is missing her daughter, but because she is one of the 1,200 she isn't on Steven's "radar". time to vote against Steve, so next Mother's Day, the P.M. of Canada might do something about the 1,200 murdered/missing mothers/daughters. It would be nice if the government spent some money on establishing a cold case squad to find out who murdered the women. I do mean there are about 400 to 600 murderers walking around scott free, or is that not on Steve's "radar" because the victims of the murderers are First Nation.

    Now keeping Steve's new proposals in mind concerning hate crimes against Israel, or what Steve has decided are hate crimes against Israel, can steve's comments be construted as hate crimes against First Nations women?// Just asking, because Bill C-51 isn't law yet. I think it not unreasonable to conclude it will be a crime to hate Israeli's but not First Nations women. Its hoped First Nations women get out and vote because from what I can conclude, they aren't part of Steve's "radar"

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    1. hi e.a.f...well I'm sure Steve is close to his mother. She was after all the first person he called after he emerged from the closet. But he has not done anything to help poor mothers, his decision to kill that national daycare plan was an absolute tragedy, and his treatment of native women is an absolute abomination....

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  5. Anonymous8:31 AM

    I agree with COMER. Time Canadian tax money was spent on those who need it.

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  6. Nothing for single mothers, very rarely for mothers in same-sex marriages or committed relationships (rarely such an income differential), or for those who didn't have the foresight to hook up with a rich guy above all. The disregard for physically and mentally wounded veterans and that for missing and murdered First Nations women are huge stains on what is claimed to be civilisation.

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