Hunger Is Not a Disease

A Family Blessing

February 16, 2024 at 8:59 pm

Families in communities everywhere make their way to a food pantry weekly. ly.  And, grandmothers are an essential part of this mix, playing their part in different ways.

Grandmothers care for the grandchildren while their parents work 2 and 3 jobs each.

Because the crowded conditions in many pantries are stressful for some children, grandmothers care for the grandchildren while the mothers shop at a food pantry.

Shopping at a food pantry can take hours depending on the crowds and the lines.  People don’t just “drop in” at a food pantry with a shopping list.

One family with 5 children attends the pantry weekly.  Grandmother sits in the car and watches the children and Buffy the dog while mother shops.  Somehow,  grandmother manages to entertain the children as they all wait in the car.  The mother stands in the line, first in the the parking lot and later in the building hallway, while she waits her turn to shop in the pantry for 3-4 minutes.

Grandmothers take their grandchildren shopping at a pantry when the parents   work.  One grandmother I know takes her grandson with her weekly.  Little David is always delighted to choose an apple as a treat on each pantry visit.

Children in our country today shop in the pantry weekly with their mothers or grandmothers.  Shopping with the family to put food on the table is an outing  practiced weekly the world over.

Listening and chatting with these children over the years I’ve observed  something:  Many of these children have never been in a large grocery store or super market.  A food pantry has a product selection of probably 50 to 100 items. A grocery store has  a product selection of probably 10,000 to 50,000 items.

BLESS OUR FAMILIES, O LORD.

Whether they are families by blood or circumstances, make them holy.

Make Yourself easy to find Lord.  Let us find you in our marriages, our families, our households, our communities and our relationships.  Let us find you globally.

Many things in our daily lives seem to conspire to divide us.  Help us see beyond the divisions and see a family.  Help us embrace one another as a family.  Help us love each other as a family .

May families in food pantries everywhere know your presence as they go about their days.

Amen

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Can We Break Down Barriers in this Pandemic? Food Insecure

May 6, 2020 at 7:55 pm

Starving Seniors?  Food insecure seniors?  Are those terms too harsh?

Let’s ratchet them down:  hungry.

Or maybe:  food insecure.  Yeah, that’s better.  It sounds better anyway.

Call it what you want, the event is the same.  It’s your grandmother or grandfather (or me…I’m certainly a grandmother) caught in a situation where there’s simply not enough food in the house.  They are food insecure.

In these times, we seniors living on Social Security are finding ourselves routinely choosing between food and medicine, food and transportation.

I have two friends who daily hitch rides to the grocery store because their cars don’t work any more.  Here, in the middle of this health crisis, they are in a desperate situation not of their making.  Everyone is trying to shelter in place, wear face masks and gloves, practice social distancing, and find a friend to help  get food.

Walking to a store is totally out for one:  her hip and knee replacements won’t allow it.  And, we’re not supposed to be out in public anyway.

And, how can a person buy a used car these days anyway?  And, when the car gives up the ghost, how will we get to work?  Yes, I know lots of seniors who are figuring out ways to bring in $$$.

The issues with seniors and food insecurity are serious because when seniors no longer have $$$ to  buy the food they need for nutrition or when they can no longer buy the medicines they need, they become ill and finally end up being cared for by their children or they end up in a nursing home.

I know many stories about:

The senior in Woodstock living on mashed potatoes.

The older woman in Bearsville who ended up in a nursing home when  her take-out food pantry cut her off and she couldn’t get to a grocery store.

The older man who lacks $$$ for enough food and is slowly starving.

There is food available:

If they can get to a food pantry or If they can find a pantry offering takeout

If they can sign up for SNAP (food stamps).

If they have the strength to deal with long lines and frazzled volunteers.

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I spoke recently with a retired man I know:

“Richard, do you get SNAP?”

“No.”

“Why, Richard?  SNAP is usually easy to get.  All you have to do is apply.”
“Well, I’m getting by without it.  Let someone else, needier than me, get the $$$  Besides, I hear the lines are outrageous.”

“Richard, think about getting SNAP.  This is a benefit you paid for.  Why leave $$$ on the table?”

The barriers to SNAP for seniors are great.  Seniors resist going to a pantry, soup kitchen, getting SNAP until they simply cannot resist any longer.  I know the feeling.  People in my age category grew up and entered adulthood feeling that if we worked hard and paid our taxes, we would end up okay.  We worked all our lives with this attitude and now that we’re retired…there simply isn’t enough.

When this happens, we feel inadequate and blame ourselves.  “I must have done something wrong.  Here I am living hand-to-mouth.  I don’t even have enough $$$ for food.  What did I do wrong?”

We are a whole generation of people blaming ourselves.  I feel like we’re really not totally to blame for being food insecure.

I tell myself the rules have changed.  This pandemic has shifted everything.  Because we’re retired, we’re not in the rules-making game anymore.

Whatever happened to the Grey Panthers?

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Thurman Greco