Today an executive director of a social service agency returned my call and said she could not answer my question without a meeting with the whole group. The only problem was that I had not asked her any question, just left a message to give me a call. Last week I also called and left a message to give me a call. She called back when I could not answer the phone and left a message giving me an answer to a question, though I had not asked her any question.
Today, May 25th, would have been the 39th birthday of my son Peter if he would have not died last summer. Over the many years of his illness my son he had to deal with many social agencies. From him and other poor and ill friends I learned how frustrating it can be to deal with agencies. They sometimes treat the ill and poor as ‘clients’ or ‘consumers’ not as equal human beings.
Today the executive director, after I got out my question out, despite her refusal to listen, asked who I was to be asking her this question. I starting to answer her but then thought and latter wrote in an email to her, that it was not important who I am and with what authority I was asking the question. It was my message in the form of a question that was important. Poor and ill people are often marginalized like I was today because they are not ‘important’ persons.
I remember once when I was trying to help a friend get help from city hall. I was able to get through to the Mayor and with his intervention the city officials gave her issue some attention. But they did ask her who this guy Bob Graf is? She should have got the attention without my intervention but never would have because she was not an ‘important’ person.
For the many years of my son’s illness I was his advocate, even when at times he did not like it. But at the end, before he died, he thanked me for my efforts and said I was his ‘best friend.’
A reporter friend of mine is working on a story of why people still die of mental illnesses or what I now call brain diseases. My friend has really made me think of why, when we can send a person into space and made great strides in research in AIDS and cancer, we cannot deal with mental illness without stigma or rejection.
I was angry and frustrated, which did no good but harm, at the executive director who would not even listen to my question. But maybe this rejection and marginalization of persons who we consider not worthy of our time and effort is part of the answer why people still die of mental illnesses.
Learning to be rejected and marginalized without getting angry and frustrated or giving up trying to “do my best”, as Peter would often say, is hard. But we must remember the words of Jesus, freely translated, “Blessed are the rejected and marginalized for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
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