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International Day of People with Disabilities (Caring Obituary)

International Day of People with Disabilities is a day to reflect on the lives of those living with disabilities.

Like everyone else in the community there are people with disabilities who are successful athletes, artists, business owners, and university professors. We also have our share of trials.

As a person with a disability I do not see myself as better or worse than anyone else in the community.

While the International Day of People with Disabilities is a great opportunity to highlight the wonderful things that people with disabilities are capable of, I also see it as an opportunity to highlight areas where there is much work to be done towards equality for all people.

In September this year I was deeply affected by Greens Senator Jordan Steele-John's speech in the Senate where he read out a list of those people with disabilities who have died in care. Since that day I have not been able to stop thinking that we need to do more. I hope the following poem that I have penned will help people use this International Day of People with Disability to reflect on our triumphs but also the need to dig deep and make things better.


Caring Obituary

Day after day people with disabilities cannot live without carers but when do we notice the death obituary?
Every year we lay to rest people with disabilities but when will we recognise Care is in an unmarked grave next to them in the cemetery? 
Why does it take a senator in a wheelchair to read out an honour roll for us to see the people with disabilities who should be there?
How many have to grieve before the politicians will believe?

At four, I knew my first person in a wheelchair who died; when I got home I began to cry and said "Mummy, will I?"
When I was fourteen, I knew a girl who was only thirteen when she began to choke and when carers brought her breakfast in the morning she never awoke. 
At twenty-six I had been to fifty funeral masses when I stopped to count. 
Now at thirty-six the number does still mount. 

Many people with disabilities can only tell us what they want to say when they cry but why do we only hear it after they die? 
It is everyone's duty to care so people with disabilities do not place blame, it is our burden to share.
It is time to focus less on wealth and pay more attention to people with disabilities' health. 
So now let's take notice and do not whisper about death, no more time to be contrary because we cannot afford to be reading Care's obituary.

International Day of People with Disability - CVI 2018

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