Next Bus Stop, Please!

 Living in poverty sometimes means you have to rely on public transportation. It would have been nice to have a car and take it whenever you need to and where-ever you need to. Buses don't always stop near or close enough to your destination. For example, I sub  in another town at any of the three schools. The one that is a walk for me is Meadow Lane. The closet stop is either the Pioneer Square stop or the Pizza Hut stop, but it takes fifteen minutes to walk to the school. On those days, I get quite a bit of exercise. Sometimes I take the flex route to a bus stop if I schedule it in advance because it s just a couple of blocks away. What really drains me is the bus ride to and fro and I believe I have wrote about that in another blog

Long before my mother passed away and while my father was alive, we have found that the bus driver would stop just a block from our alley. That was a blessing as my mother wasn't getting younger, and after my father passed away, it became more of a godsend for my mother as she became frail and fragile, not to mention that she hated using the walker and that she had dementia which meant that if she had to use the walker, she would complain about it. "Do I have to use the walker?"

Funny how things change after a death. Another blessing I found we had during her last few years was the meal deal at McDonald's. After she passed, they no longer had it. Our church members blessed us during her life on earth. People took us to church, sometimes paid our way for events or take us to them. One time only did they pay for us to attend the Candlelit dinner put on by the women of the church. But after her death, we got a new pastor who reminded us of the new Pharaoh after Joseph's death. The new pastor never met mom and only heard about her through us--her offspring. He ran things differently than the one who knew of us and our circumstances. They could only help my sister and I for so much then their well was dry. What else had changed? The bus route system and new bus drivers.  No longer would they stop on the block closest to our house. Just like the staff of our church service thinking we were well able women to not need their help as much, the general manager of Kings Area Rural Transit remove the one stop my sister and I still needed to stop at. We weren't getting younger either. Both of us in our fifties and not all in perfect health. Carrying heavy bags home gave us back aches and my sister has arthritis in her knee. At least they let us take our cart on the bus yet, I rather have the next stop. The stop that was.

Why change after mother passed away? Are we discarded as nothing? For eight years we took care of our mother. While my sister was at her internship or at choir, I had to stay home and take care of our mother when I rather be active in church, but we were all she had and do we it out of love. Man may not pay back the kindness and sacrifice we had shown to our mother, but God noticed and he will reward us in due time, but one request, next bus stop, please.