The angst of the past two years still sits there, just a little below our collective psyche, still affecting our everyday, as all grief does, rendering us lethargic, disoriented, and wary of the future. Canadians are frozen and have yet to thaw..It came across my email a few weeks ago: “April 28, May Day, Day of Mourning.” This looks promising. I kept reading. A post sent out by our union to remind of a day of commemoration: “We remember workers who have died, were injured, or who became ill from work. We commit to protecting workers and preventing further workplace tragedies.” In solidarity, on April 28th of each year, flags are flown at half mast on Parliament Hill to mark the #DayofMourning..I sighed..I had stories, too...that didn't belong:.A male student in a class zoom chat vented his frustration that certain box stores were open while all the other businesses were shut up. He suggested that Walmart is owned by Amazon anyway..Another student, triggered, promptly left the class. She couldn't believe that someone could make light of COVID-19 and what we were going through. She had struggled through COVID-19. She is a nurse, and she cites the day when on her shift four of her patients died from COVID-19; meanwhile, there was a protest march outside the hospital by some “anti-maskers”..The young man who had triggered her? Weeks later, he was dead..Then there's the woman who was uncertain about getting the vax while pregnant. She asked her doctors for their advice and on their glowing approval of the vaccine she took the jab. She had a stillbirth. “She still has problems,” I'm told, “and is not going to be ok.”.Or, a friend and surgeon of 15 years was fired from his job, even though he had a medical exemption, and is still trying to make ends meet, consulting from an office and giving cortisone injections..The man who ran a small repair shop had to close his doors for lack of business during the lockdowns. A couple weeks later he committed suicide..Unvaxxed friends have been told over and over, “I hope you get COVID-19 and die,” by acquaintances...and the Toronto Star..And yes, we have all lost or nearly lost loved ones to the virus. When we were at our lowest, though, we were told we could not say goodbye. The only place we could mourn together was at Walmart..These are not stories from the “conspiracy theory-inducing American media”; these are stories of our friends. Our neighbours..The stories abound, but you'd never know it: in the public sphere its like we just all disappeared into La-la-Netflix-land for two years. In Ontario, we just went through an election and the pandemic barely made stage. Doug Ford was able to quietly take the sidelines, and nobody held him to account. Why in the Pandemic did unelected officials wield so much power? Why did the definitions of “with COVID-19” and “of COVID-19” change, in the scientific discussion? Why was Ontario one of the most stringent areas in North America?.No, its like 'Hey, with the summer approaching, with the war in Ukraine, and with the Conservative Leadership race, and monkeypox—who has time to think about it? I mean, there are guns to ban, an Internet to censor, indigenous groups to use for photo ops, and a swirling hive of elites to virtue signal. The federal mandate has been suspended after all! The hazy days of summer are here so let's put off the COVID-19 alarms until at least mid-August..“Canadians seeking closure are finally holding funerals, memorials delayed by COVID-19 19” reads a recent CBC article. It shares stories about options families have come up with to finally grieve—or the nicer “find closure”. There's a pic of two mourning women standing in black clothes watching a zoomed funeral..Notice the framing: “memorials delayed by COVID-19”, rather than “by COVID-19 policies.” There's no actor here; its all passive voice. The virus gets agency: The virus put out press releases. The virus invited certain people to the science table. The virus told us not to gather, do the elbow bump, and to stay two meters apart even in a windstorm. It was the virus that chose not to keep politicians from hobnobbing or hospital CEOs from collectively taking exotic Christmas vacations. The virus said 'no you cannot have this most essential of human rituals, indeed more important than keeping the tax-generating liquor store open.'.Nowhere does the article point any fingers at leaders who set draconian, useless, and heartless policies that at the end of the day may have done more harm than good. Funerals outside? Nope, says the virus..Instead the article shows how good Canadians respond to grief: they put it on hold until they are allowed to share it again. Then they literally “pick a date”..Most of us do not live in that world. We cannot with the “trust-the-experts” pale rationalism so cleanly compartmentalize our grief any more than the experts could the virus. We are human beings, not cases..We do not grieve under control..We do not grieve when our grief can only fall between prescribed societal parameters..We do not grieve when we are gaslighted by those who tell us that we did not experience the hate and fear that we know we lived with, wondering everyday single day when we opened our laptops if the government would love us or hate us. Wondering every day if our employer would lower the hammer, accept or reject our groveling pleas for an accommodation, or would come into our classrooms or offices or job sites and tell us there publicly that our time was up. “Sorry, I just have to follow the guidelines.”.Since a few months into the pandemic, our media has refused to cover our stories (Remember those quaint old “I hardly knew I had the virus” stories in the spring of 2020?).No matter: we must keep telling them to each other. How else do we heal?.Some of us wander around covertly, wary about the majority of Canadians who have complied fully and suspended all healthy skepticism of politicians, drug companies, or the general abuse of power. They have told the rest of us that we are selfish and ignorant and should not be tolerated. How in the world do we recover? How do we link arms together on July 1st? How will we come back together as a society? Is there any leader even attempting this much needed reconciliation?.Mistakes were made, power has been seized, and politicians have unhesitatingly pitted the skeptical against healthcare workers who bore so much of the weight and grief while serving our most ill. We have all lost..And if these men have just missed it or just been bombarded with too much responsibility and fear in an unknown situation with too much changing science, they still have made one fundamental mistake from Day 1: in treating us like children and setting the parameters of public discussion too stringently, they have refused to allow a stronger, more trusting and truly diverse country to emerge. We come from all places—both inside the hospital and and outside on the street marching for freedom..Only out the other side of an honest reckoning, out of an acknowledgment of our grief and the mistakes that have been made, can we ever find something better..And actually heal.
