As far as November on Vancouver Island goes, it’s a pretty nice morning: rain is only spitting. Spitting is one thing; pouring down is another. I’ve got the heat cranked, Otis Taylor on in the background, and a fresh cup of the mud going. Life’s good right now because my world is small right now. There’s only so much malarkey and tomfoolery a person can tolerate—after the new case numbers have rolled in and I’ve been getting push notifications about #WhiteHouseKaren and #JusticeForJohnnyDepp for hours, I usually hit my limit at around 4 pm every day.
I’ll probably get home to discover one of the cats has pooped in the bed again.
It’s easy to think that because one thing is bad, everything is. We’re at a bit of a fork in the road with provincial COVID-19 numbers; they’ve been, for most of us, an inconvenience. That’s no disrespect to the frontline workers who fear for their lives, or the family members of the 310 people in BC who have died as a result of the virus at the time of me writing this. There will come a point where those who have been impacted directly by COVID-19 stop being the minority. It’s simply a mathematical reality, and that’s the way I have to think about it for the sake of my own sanity; as numbers rise, so too does the likelihood of it hitting close to home. As I write this, there are 114 active cases on the island; that number was a mere eight just weeks ago. We have to realize that mathematical reality is coming sooner than we would like it to.
If the world could shed tears, raindrops would fall constantly.
Don’t forget that things will, in time, return to a healthier normal, and this will, in time, be but a bad stretch of road.
But that time is not now.
Listen to the rain fall, because one day, it won’t. Feel the panic, the dread, the heartbreak, because one day, you won’t. Eight months into this is eight months gone, eight months closer, eight months tired, and eight months tougher.
“We need to say no to social gatherings right now,” provincial health officer Bonnie Henry said in her Monday, November 16 briefing. If that’s not clear, I don’t know what is. So, say no. Be tough. Scream into your pillow, run 10 kilometres in the pouring rain; do what you need to do, and we’ll get through this.
We’re past a fork in the road. Take the spotlight off of your of needs and your own beliefs, and protect others.
And to the family members of the nine BC residents who died over the weekend and the 11 who died on Monday, I’m sorry. I know the rain is pouring harder for some of us than it is for others.