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pyraxisThe Day of Mourning was today for disabled people who were killed by the people who should have been caring for them.
The List is too long.
(Disturbing content, obviously, especially for people with caregivers.)
When a disabled person is killed like this, all too often there is an outpouring of sympathy for the killer. An assumption that the burden must have been too great, platitudes that the disabled person is in a better place now, the false judgment that their life was not worth living because of this or that arbitrary declaration of "quality of life".
Every one of these things forgets that the disabled person is a person, who deserves first and foremost the same mourning and the same justice as any other person.
Caretaker fatigue is real. But it is no excuse for murder. The tunnel-vision that people get when they are drained and exhausted, where they can't see alternate possibilities, must not end in destruction. The things that they tell themselves in order to get through the day, about their own necessity and how the disabled person could not continue to exist without them - they may be comforting in the moment but they lead to bad places when taken too far.
Parts of society are very rich, in money and in caring, in attention and communication and knowledge. Some of these resources need to be redirected so that those who are cared for do not end up in hidden vortexes where other people write them off as no longer fit to be alive.
The List is too long.
(Disturbing content, obviously, especially for people with caregivers.)
When a disabled person is killed like this, all too often there is an outpouring of sympathy for the killer. An assumption that the burden must have been too great, platitudes that the disabled person is in a better place now, the false judgment that their life was not worth living because of this or that arbitrary declaration of "quality of life".
Every one of these things forgets that the disabled person is a person, who deserves first and foremost the same mourning and the same justice as any other person.
Caretaker fatigue is real. But it is no excuse for murder. The tunnel-vision that people get when they are drained and exhausted, where they can't see alternate possibilities, must not end in destruction. The things that they tell themselves in order to get through the day, about their own necessity and how the disabled person could not continue to exist without them - they may be comforting in the moment but they lead to bad places when taken too far.
Parts of society are very rich, in money and in caring, in attention and communication and knowledge. Some of these resources need to be redirected so that those who are cared for do not end up in hidden vortexes where other people write them off as no longer fit to be alive.
