Mea Culpa...

Complicit -- adj., Associated with or participating in a questionable act or a crime.

***
Daily, I meet parents who have cared for their son or daughter for 20, 30 and 40 years. They have not abandoned their kids. As parents no one can expect any less from them. Would you walk away from your handicapped child? Neither do these parents. But there must be a limit to how many years of sacrifice, labour, residence and money one can realistically expect two people to provide to a child who is no longer a child.

There should be a limit past which society says, "You have done well -- beyond well, beyond all possible expectations. We as a society value not just people's lives, but the quality of people's lives. We value your lives as parents and the lives of your children."

Instead, we provide parents with token aids. Support payments and supplements. And then, when all else fails -- a crisis network which throws money on any given brushfire. This staunches the flow for a time. In reality, it is hush money. It is all hush money. Here you go...a few dollars to hold you for a month or two...and the problem goes away. The system is off the hook.

And the reason I do not strap a sandwich board on and ring a bell at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, is that I benefit from the system as well. Yep. I have mortgage payments to make, don't you know? And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my hush money. 40K keeps my mouth shut despite the overwhelming evidence of the injustice perpetrated in the name of a government which insists it is deeply concerned with 'people in need of services.'

This, I have decided, makes me complicit. I am the system.

* * *

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

-- Bishop Desmond Tutu