Bravery

We're all so terribly brave, aren't we?

Like we have no idea where we're all going and we march on. Or stumble. Or fumble. There is no light at the end of this particular tunnel. At least not yet. And I hope fervently that we will not repeat The Great Flu of 1918 where millions upon millions died and it appears that many do not learn from the protocols they put in place even then, over 100 years ago. Contagion is contagion is contagion.

The toll on fire and emergency services on the western seaboard of the US to counteract this cataclysmic burning must take a huge toll along with the risk of Covid to all concerned. Bravery indeed.


I'm avoiding the US news as if it were another form of plague on the landscape but sometimes it is unavoidable. A horror of a genocide with nearly 250,000 citizens now dead. My friends who live there and also hold Canadian citizenship have made arrangements to move back to Canada in November. Constant sunshine for them has a high price. And then the fires. Flames and pestilence at the same time. It crushes the brain. This was yesterday's Covid statistics for the top countries cases on the planet. With the US staggeringly ahead.

Here we are catching (in isolation) each case as it lands and thus preventing community spread. The 4 Atlantic provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland & Labrador) are in the same bubble, with provincial border checks for those coming in from outside these provinces.

St. Pierre and Miquelon, tiny islands off the coast of Newfoundland which is French territory, is not faring so well. 11 cases in their tiny population of 6,000.

The rest of Canada isn't faring so well at the moment.

We're all tapping into our depleting stockpiles of bravery these days. Even if it's just shutting our eyes and going wah-wah and not contemplating a future that has no shape whatsoever.

Wallop!

My friend D**** and I email each other many times a day. As thoughts strike us. She likes my cursing. I curse out what ails her and the sometimes appalling treatment by the medical people at the hospital, her occasional depressive thoughts, life. You know. It all helps. She's told to "Be brave" a lot. Have you ever heard of anything more unhelpful when you are scared to death of tumours lumping out the hidden organs of your body and half your bowel is lodged somewhere in the trash outside the hospital labs?

So I tell her to ask these medical morons to please change places with her - they can lie down in her bed and she can yell at them to be brave after she's sliced them open. I said that to a team of them once, when my surgical wound opened up and started bleeding all over the hospital floor and I was screaming and they said it to me. It shut them up.

For what is bravery? Those poor teenage soldiers in both "world" wars smiling while they were used as cannon fodder and slaughtered?

Chin barely quivering while biopsies confirm your worst fears?

Whimpering quietly under the covers when the pain meds fail to ease your suffering?

As far as I'm concerned not groaning/moaning/screaming/yelling in pain is just protecting the delicate sensibilities of those around us, right? It's a very good thing to let that pain out. Why bottle it up for the ulcers to play with?

I was sharing with some friends over dinner last night the fact that I am now terrified of walking in case the sudden paralysis in my legs stops me cold in my tracks, as has happened in the past, and heaven forbid I should burden someone with having to come and get me.

And we all had a good laugh, like gawd forbid we should be a nuisance to anyone even though we're crumpled on a heap on the road, breathing our last.

It must be Irish. Or something.

Let me die bravely, right here on main street.

Sorry for your trouble for having to shovel me off to the side.

D**** and I had a good laugh over that one.