Elections Day

The last several conversations I’ve had with my mom have been peaceful, calm and tranquil: we were both cracking jokes and talking about more than just the weather. This is so unusual for us. It’s eerie. I almost considered giving her my phone number, but then I thought about the times she was in psychosis and calling non-stop. Then again, maybe I won’t.

When I spoke to her this thanksgiving Sunday, she told me a guy called Patrick “Doyle” stepped out in front of her and shook her hand as she was heading up into Sunday Mass, and then another guy tried to shake her hand but she got scared and hurried into the church.

I said “Patrick who? Gosh Ma, I hope you didn’t shake a Conservative guy’s hand,” but she couldn’t tell. Then my mother says to me, in the same concerned voice she used when she beat the pants off me in a game of Monopoly 4 years ago “They’re all the same, and they try, but sometimes they have to clean up the mess the man before them make, and then they can’t change nothing for better because they too busy clean up the problems from before.”

All I could say was “Uhm….yeah.”

I’ve spent years thinking of my mother as shrewd but simple, not concerned with the bigger picture at all, a person who would have preferred to have stayed in the village, life in a new country, a big city was too overwhelming for her. Everything unfamiliar was intensely feared. So it took me by surprise to hear her commentary.

Sadly, I looked up the riding I grew up in and of course, stupid Patrick Whathisface is a Tory. Like they give a damn about people with mental illnesses, people like my mother. I wonder who the other guy was….and MAN do I ever wish I’d been there. Though I doubt I woulda said anything, let alone even smack his hand away, but I’d like to think I’d try….that I might say “Hey Pat, when will we get a National Mental Health program working? Shouldn’t we be ashamed of ourselves as a highly developed nation? I know I’m ashamed of your Party’s platforms, so don’t shake her hand. I’d rather you just spit in her face, and we-the-people kick you in the shins on Election day.”

Then, after I already made my prejudiced decision, I decided to look at Patrick’s website and it seems like the guy has done some good work, but then it is his PR page I’m reading. Doesn’t he know he works for the devil? The one that goes by the name of Stephen Harper?

Whenever my father used to say “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” I’d think, can’t I see the new devil first and decide?

Because the devil we know will destroy us.