Reflections on a Difficult Time

I was listening to NPR on my car radio today.  They were broadcasting an interview with Sandra Day O'Connor former Justice of the Supreme Court.  It was very interesting.  She tells us about the time just after she graduated from law school and was looking for work. Apparently her husband was finishing law school so she needed to work.   Several large and prestigious legal firms had notices on the information bulletin boards at her college.  She did say the name, but I was driving and couldn't write it down and now I can't remember it.  But everywhere she applied or tried to apply she was told "we don't hire women". No apology, no explanation and no laws to prevent that sort of discrimination. She is older than I am, but not so much that I never experienced sex discrimination in work, hiring, and most especially in school. Of course being a Catholic girl in a religious school we saw the discrimination on a daily basis.  Nuns were secondary citizens in the religious life. They couldn't be priests and were subject to the authority of the priest and the bishop and the pope who were all men. When the sex scandals surfaced they were always with priests or brothers (monks).  There have been some scandals involving nuns, but they were few and related to  the abuse of the children and sometimes women in their care, but not of a sexual nature.  There weren't many scandals, but enough to make me wonder about the preaching.  Imagine someone in authority telling you that you must be honest, not steal, not be lazy, not touch your own private parts for pleasure - all these things are sins (and many more that I don't really have the space to mention), displeasing to god, making the devil happy, and  a shame to your parents if you get caught - and then committing all these acts and more as well as molesting young children who are terribly hurt by these acts.  It should destroy your faith. I can't imagine why anyone is still a member of this church. I do believe in God, but not the one the catholic church believes in or claims to believe in.

It is interesting to me that things have changed a lot, but there is still room for improvement.  So these days a potential employer can't say that he won't hire you because you are female.  That is simply against the law.  But what he can do is make it difficult to get hired  or to keep the job.  If she has children and knows that she will have to work odd hours or weekends she may not be able to meet these requirements.  If training of a specific nature is required and she  is unable to get the training because she is female then she won't get the job, but she may have a chance to fight that depending on the specifics.

But back to Sandra Day O'Connor.  She faced much sex discrimination as a female attorney, and she sort of just went with the flow.  I think she's an amazing woman and I am sorry she retired.  She was worried about her husband who was and presumably still is suffering from Alzheimer's disease or some type of dementia.  Not many men do that for their wives, but in large numbers women care for their husbands until it becomes impossible.  Most people with this disease are older citizens and their caretakers are also older.  That makes it hard when it comes to some of the physical aspects of care and almost impossible in some cases.

My father suffered from this disease, and my mother and I took care of him for years, but when he got aggressive and threw things we had to place him in a nursing home.  My mother was only about 4ft 10 inches tall and very frail herself.  I helped but was working full time at that time and a single parent as well.  I couldn't be there all the time and my mother's health was deteriorating.  We visited regularly. The nurses were good. He died about 5 years after moving to a nursing home.  It is a sad and terrible disease that steals a person's memory and exhausts his caretakers and family members.  And yet so little is known about it, it's causes and prevention, and most of what is known is not helpful.  Treatments are still in the trial stages.  I hope my sisters and I are spared the ravages of this disease. I for one have seen more than enough.

When one is in this situation with a parent or mate who is draining the life from
her death sometimes seems like the only way out.  It is sad and tragic and research needs to be done yes, but something needs to be done for the caretakers.  They need help too.