My mother died the day she turned 55.
Despite her struggles, she selflessly loved and supported those who meant the most to her. In so many ways, she loved those who society deemed outcast and unloveable, and through her relentless love of others, her relationship with God was readily apparent. While I miss her dearly, it would be selfish of me to wish that she were still alive and suffering rather than at peace.
My mother was what some folks call white trash, and by extension, that made me white trash growing up too. Truth is, she never stood much of a chance of climbing out of the poverty in which she became mired the minute she was born. Mom didn't finish high school, but she decided to pursue an education when I was a kid. She found it harder and harder to make ends meet working as a gas station attendant and grocery store cashier, and education seemed like a good solution.
She earned a GED, then a diploma from a technical college. Nobody in her family had ever finished high school, much less attended tech school, and I will never forget how proud of her I was when I saw her walk across the stage and get her diploma. Sense of accomplishment is a pleasure rarely afforded to those who are impoverished. I suppose that is why I still choke up every time someone I love tells me they are proud of me. The truth is, Mom would have been proud of me no matter what.
As hard as she worked, Mom was never able to fully escape poverty. Even after she became qualified to work in an office rather than behind a cash register, she remained a part of what economists call the working poor. It turns out that all those years of lifting and standing while working dead-end jobs had taken a toll on her body. By the time she finally landed an office job with benefits, she needed lower back surgery. For the last twenty years of her life, she lived with chronic pain, and she tried an endless array of prescription drugs - both those prescribed to her and those not - but she never could keep the pain at bay.
At first reading, the story of my mother's life seems like little more than a tragedy. However, it is much more than that. Her story reveals the stark realities of growing up poor. All across Appalachia, there are thousands of women just like my mother working, striving, struggling, just to exist. So many people in Appalachia have broken minds and broken bodies and broken hearts, and they do nothing more than survive because that's all they can do.
It is as popular now as ever to blame poor people for their station in life. Republican politicians love to talk about how poor people could stop being poor if only they made better choices or worked harder. If only they'd stop buying iPhones, they could afford insurance. They have no clue how hard it is in many places in the US just to keep the lights on and food on the table.
It is easy for them, from the comfort of their cushy offices and homes, with full bellies and bank accounts, to pretend that poor people like my mother are poor because they are stupid or lazy or ignorant or irresponsible rather than confront the broken systems that perpetuate poverty in Appalachia and all across the US. Poor people don't contribute to reelection funds, but those who profit from poor people sure do.
Therefore, truth be told, most politicians couldn't care less about the plight of the poor. There's so much profit to be made from poor people - think payday loans, high-interest rent-to-own stores, for-profit colleges, and overpriced mobile homes - that politicians and their crony-capitalist donors have a vested interest in keeping them poor.
When I think about all the suffering my mother endured over the course of her life, I can't help but wonder how anyone could think that she was to blame for her poverty. She started working at 12, and she worked every day for years, long after her body gave out on her. She made choices, some good, and plenty bad, but poor people have fewer options when faced with impending and potentially life-changing decisions. Poor people like Mom are often forced to choose from a small number of shitty options, and most of them try to find the one that is slightly less shitty than the others.
When people are eaten up mentally and physically by a lifetime of compounded shitty choices, they reach a point where they can't even decide what is best anymore, because they realize that no matter what they do - no matter how hard they try - they are cogs in a broken machine and nobody cares about them anyway. Poor Appalachian people are broken, but not nearly as broken as the systems that keep them poor.
When my mother died, she had fifty-six cents in her bank account. Had someone told her they really needed that fifty-six cents, she would have given it to them without a second thought. She lived in a world that led her to understand the importance - no, the necessity - of helping others. If there's any hope at all for fixing the brokenness in Appalachia, it lies with those who have a servant's heart. It starts with putting aside condescending and selfish beliefs. It starts with taking a lesson from my sweet little mama and loving the outcast and the unloveable.
Joshua Wilkey,
My Mother Wasn't Trash, July 14, 2017
"The world would be better off if people tried to become better. And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off. For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off. But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off.
What we give to the poor for Christ's sake, is what we carry with us when we die."
Peter Maurin
“What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words— we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.
We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. There is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”
Dorothy Day
