I Dreamt a Dream of Dad....

In 2000 my father became ill.  Most of my family had already moved to Georgia and he was still in Michigan.  He ex-wife, my ex-stepmother, knew he was ill and never told us.  She knew he was bed ridden and that he kept his apartment door unlocked so that the pizza delivery guy could come in and bring him the pizza in his room.  Knew that his kitchen was full of sewage, that the pipes had backed up and he couldn't do anything about it, knew he wasn't well enough to help himself and conned him out of his nice car in exchange for a broke down junker.
My sister, her husband, and my niece were still in Michigan, but they couldn't reach him.  My mother went up for a visit at Christmas in 2000 and said it wasn't like him to not respond, so she went over to his apartment.  My mother found him like that.  My mother and step-father took him to my sister's house for a month so that they could pack his apartment and rent a moving truck.  They brought my father home in late January of 2001.
All of us, my mother, step-father, sister, niece, my son, my father, and myself all stayed at my mother's until I could find a place for my father, son, and myself to live.  When I found one, I took my father and became his care provider.  He had an appointment with a specialist one afternoon, he showered, shaved, and sat down for coffee.  He never walked again after that.  I called my friend to help me, he carried my father into the car.  When we got to the specialists, I was in such a state of panic, I didn't know what was happening or why he couldn't walk.  The specialist had him transported directly to Athens Regional Hospital.
During this time, my father was on Cobra through work.  By the time the Neurologist at the hospital found what was happening and that he was going to die, his insurance cut off.  I was able, with the help of the hospital to get emergency Medicaid, and hospice to take him on "indigent", which means they lend you a hospital bed, give you supplies, an RN that would come once a week to check his catheter, and a CNA that would come 3 times a week to bathe him.  My father was not yet 59 years old.  I had applied for his SSI/SSDI in January, when he had gotten to Georgia.  My father started working at the age of 16 and hadn't stopped until he became ill.
I cared for my father until he died at home with me, on Saturday, October 6th, 2001.  It rained that day.  Social Security finally approved him, 2 days after he died, he was 59 years old.  He never got a penny.  He was on "indigent" care so he had no "real" care...just me for the most part.  He was a Sergeant in the army, he was a successful man who worked all his life and he got nothing.  The army gave me a flag, but wouldn't give him a headstone.  Social Security, well they, as always, dragged their feet, and our government got everything he ever worked for and kept it for themselves. My father was cremated and had to sit on a shelf for a year until we could afford to bury him, then it was another year before we could afford to buy him a headstone.
This is what happens... it doesn't matter who you are, how hard you work, if you've served your country.  It's dollars and cents.  If you are a burden and not a cash cow they treat you as one, and they let you die "indigent".
In memory of a kind and gentle soul... Your worth was beyond measure to me dad.