While I am aware that our economic woes have created difficulties all over this country, it is hard to ignore the individual tragedies that occur in one’s own neighbourhood.
Right across the street from my house, for example, lives a couple that has been struggling quietly for this past year.
In many ways, it is a love story and deserves to have a sweet ending. You see, this couple is struggling with MS.
Ron’s wife, Irene, has it and depends on his support. Because of her physical limitations, Ron had to make a decision that has had a devastating result on their finances: he left his job.
His decision was not made lightly and it was made at the beginning of what I will call the “crash.”
At the time, he thought that his skills would make it reasonably easy to find another job. This hasn’t been the case.
When the company for which Ron was working began feeling the financial “pinch,” he was told that he would continue to have a job but that he would have to be working up north for stretches of time.
This would have been difficult under most circumstances, but when one’s wife has MS, it becomes impossible.
How could he, Ron pointed out, be expected to be gone for weeks at a time when his wife was dependent on him in so many ways?
If he wanted to stay employed, he was told, he would not argue the point and go where the work happened to be.
And so Ron quit. The decision was not made frivolously but has left them struggling to make payments, especially to the bank for their mortgage.
It appears that this struggle may soon end.
Ron and Irene may soon be losing their house at 50 Briarwood Crescent here in Blackfalds. They will join the thousands who are already victims of this dreadful economy.
I prefer happy endings.
H. M. Weaver,
Blackfalds