On both sides of the Channel, people are protesting in relatively small numbers and with varying levels of fury about the need to be vaccinated against coronavirus and/or health passes to prove it’s as safe as possible for them to be welcomed in various public places. Disgusting comparisons are drawn in France between health passes and the persecution and slaughter of Jews by occupying Nazis. In the UK, the sort of people who think Trump won and Brexit is wonderful depict vaccination as a murky plot or dismiss it as unnecessary or unsafe.
My sister, Sandra Falconer, offers a different view, one to challenge the British antivaxers and French defenders of the right to infect. Sandra is double-jabbed but still caught COVID-19. It was unpleasant but, and of this she is certain, a lot less so than if she had not been vaccinated. She has composed these wonderful words about her experience, and the emotions they inspired, and I am proud to reproduce them, from the Joy Club, on the day our dad, and our brother Phil's dad, would have been 112 (he died decades before Covid was thought of) ...
Close Encounters
Beaten down by the symptoms of the dreaded pestilence, I at last surrendered to the inevitable. I consented to hospitalisation because my GP in her wisdom, led me to believe that it would be tests, tablets and a revolving turnstile, home before bedtime.
Even so, as I was helped into the ambulance, I felt like a rabbit caught between headlights. After 18 months of this pandemic, we harbour images of sick people with blue lips and tubes protruding painfully. It wasn’t like that at all, and it could have been so much worse had I not been vaccinated, but there was to be no rapid return to the Falconer fold.
It is at times like these, that we realise what has greatest significance in our lives. At the beginning of the week, I was consumed with money, meals and plans for our upcoming holiday. By the end, I had completely reassessed my priorities. I set aside the superficial, even the big issues like 3rd world debt and climate change retreated into relative obscurity. What came to the fore were human relationships.
As, one by one, my family members fell foul of COVID we stretched encompassing, collective arms around each other bridging the miles.
Under normal circumstances this wonderfully dysfunctional family chugs along more or less harmoniously, give or take a few skirmishes. Last week, niggles were forgotten as we sought to support each other in any way possible, as desperate to reassure ourselves as to provide comfort. Looking further afield there were meals delivered, a posy of healing herbs from a lady I see too seldom, a barrage of calls, texts and flowers. My friend, and fellow Joy Clubber, Joyce, promptly placed me on a prayer circle.
“I’m not ready to lose her yet,” she told God.
The warmth that descended as human spirit touched human spirit is something I will never forget but humbling though it was, it was not entirely unexpected. I have been blessed with many beautiful people in my life. They are my jewels, and they did not disappoint.
What was more surprising was my experience on the COVID ward. The cheerful competence of the medical staff gave me a three-day respite from my unsuccessful attempts to recover on the sofa. They dispensed care and healing, from the whirlwind nurses, coping with a mountain of work, to the consultant who breezed in each morning with his jokes and wry observations, yet who sat so compassionately on the bed of a young mum as he imparted very unwelcome news. Nor will I forget the nursing auxiliary who shimmied onto his 10-hour night shift and brightened our evening. We had to tell him to stop because it hurt too much when we coughed and laughed at the same time.
The other ladies on the ward were perhaps the most memorable. Seriously ill themselves, they were fantastic. We helped each other when the grossly overstretched staff couldn’t, we made connections, we found friends in common. I discovered that the lady in the next bed had grown up in the same small County Durham town as me and we spent hours walking down memory lane. Most of all we made each other laugh, as much as we dared, robbing the ward of its potential for doom.
The whole experience has been a voyage of discovery. I have always valued my relationships, now I give them the very highest status and I do not exaggerate when I say that a sizeable lottery win could not have brought more pleasure. I have connected and reconnected, I have touched what is essentially both human and divine.
That is why I am so adamant about the issue of vaccination. It didn’t prevent transmission, but it certainly mitigated the severity of the disease especially in those in whom complications might have had grave consequences.
Most of us who are now beginning on the road to recovery were vaccinated. As the medics pointed out those who suffer the worst symptoms are not.
These are people at the coal face, who deal with COVID on a daily basis. They know the reality and shake their heads in disbelief at those who prefer to take the word of an unsourced meme on social media to science and experience.
Now that I am home, I think of that young mum and wonder if she will ever hold her two small children again, and I remember the 23-year-old girl who cried all night until she lacked the energy to continue. They had both refused the vaccine because they did not want to “put poison in their bodies”. We all have relationships – people we’re desperate to keep, and those who would be crushed if they had to learn to live without us. We can we so careless with something so precious and to an extent, this is avoidable.
As my brother remarked, “How do I get through to these antivaxers? Without that vaccine, I might no longer have a sister.“
My experience has bought it home to me just how crucial are our relationships. Even seemingly much larger issues ultimately boil down to that centrality. It always begins with the human connection. Has there ever been a better time to acknowledge that, and honour the point at which we meet.
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