By Lisa Senecal
In October of 2020, my mother was impatient. It was both out of character for her and entirely within reason. She had already cast her ballot, but her Biden/Harris 2020 yard sign had yet to arrive. Beyond voting, she needed to make her support known publicly. For her, the urgency was about more than knowing we were in the final days of an election she cared deeply about; she was also in her final days.
Her yard sign did arrive, and she made her political voice heard one last time after a lifetime of public service and political participation. She died four years ago today, just five days before the election and two decades before her family or anyone who knew her had imagined. Joan Senecal, my mom, was someone who did the right thing, which included taking care of herself. But pancreatic cancer paid that no mind, and she died surrounded by love and being cared for at home by me and my two sisters, and my dad, her adoring husband of 56 years.
I’ll admit this piece is self-serving. I want to honor my mother. She has been in my thoughts constantly this past month as I find myself, again, working long hours for a pro-democracy organization, alternating between anxiety and hope. Talking politics with my mom in the final month of her life was nothing new. It’s what my family has done from my earliest memories. What was different was being deeply afraid for our country and hearing my mother express that same fear, not for herself but for the country her daughters and grandchildren would inhabit. In her final days, it was a relief to tell her confidently that Trump would lose, and her family would be okay. I believe that today, but it will take decades of work and progress for my pre-Trump confidence in our democratic system to be restored. My mom would have been more optimistic. Optimism was her default setting, and she returned to it in a way I envied and admired.
A largely overlooked policy proposal by Kamala Harris would have filled her with optimism and has made her even more present to me these past weeks – the ability to use Medicare benefits to cover long-term home health care. I get it. It's not the sexiest of subjects, and most of us don't want to think about this policy's need. It feels like focusing on loss. I assure you, it is not. The time that my father and sisters had caring for my mother at home with the support of Hospice visits was a gift—my mom’s time at home needing around-the-clock care was measured in weeks, not years. But too many Americans find themselves without options when long-term care is needed, needlessly trading their home for a nursing home. Often, care could be provided at home – if there were a program to cover the costs.
My mother worked for Vermont’s Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living (DAIL) from 1995-2010, serving as the Commissioner from 2007-2010. The dedication in an annual report released by her former department in 2021 reads: “Her dedication to serving her community and protecting vulnerable Vermonters is an example to us all.” Indeed, it is.
She had many reasons to be proud of the progress that she and her team at DAIL achieved, but nothing had been more challenging or rewarding than establishing Vermont’s “Choices for Care” program. Choices for Care is the first-in-the-nation program that enables Medicaid-eligible Vermonters who are age 18 years old and over and need nursing home-level care to choose where they will receive that care: “in their home, in their family’s home, an Adult Family Care home, Enhanced Residential Care or nursing facility.” This program has served as a national model for other states and is the Medicaid version of Harris’s Medicare proposal.
Every new height that we reach comes by standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. We don’t always get to see the fruits of our labor, but that makes the work no less valuable. I like to think that someone in Harris’s policy shop was aware of the Choices for Care program – either in Vermont or in another state that was inspired by the program that meant so much to my mother. Perhaps that knowledge was a spark that led to Harris’s Medicare home care proposal.
Choices for Care and Harris’s proposal are fundamentally American. They can provide dignity and the freedom to choose how we live our lives. Choices that are not limited by financial resources. Options that do not force families to choose between caring for family members and providing for their families. My mother instilled in her family the incalculable value of choice and the essential nature of service and participation. She knew democracy was not a spectator sport and that progress wasn't other people's work. She would be so proud to support Kamala and the strength, smarts, and compassion she embodies – the very same qualities that make me proud every day to be Joan Senecal’s daughter.
