Starting in March, as the COVID-19 situation became more and more serious in Squamish — and beyond — nearly every activity became tightly controlled, with even major milestones such as weddings and funerals being postponed or live-streamed.
But like taxes, births and deaths couldn’t be stopped.
My sister announced last Christmas that she and her husband were expecting their first child, due in August.
Ella came into the world on Aug. 3, and we haven’t yet made the journey to the prairies to hold her.
Our initial concern was flying in and potentially bringing the virus to a place, and potentially to friends and family, that hadn’t seen much in terms of a first wave, but now with COVID-19 rates spiralling out of control there, we’re just as much avoiding the chance we might make things worse out here.
The other shoe dropped more recently after my grandmother was admitted to a Winnipeg hospital after suffering a fall at home and a more severe one while in care.
We had video chats with her in the hospital, and ultimately had to say goodbye this way, though we were grateful for the opportunity to do even that.
With no real chance of regaining a reasonable quality of life, and with her pain managed, it was with some relief that she passed peacefully on Oct. 17.
In retrospect, the timing of her passing was fortuitous in another sense in that the hospital is now the site of a serious COVID outbreak just one floor up from hers; thus, it’s a relief knowing that she’s no longer at risk of potentially experiencing a far worse death and that my family members have removed the risk of wandering in the belly of that beast.
Thankfully, we are holding off on having a service until it’s safe to travel and to gather, but even that can be a point of contention.
Unlike B.C., Manitoba is implementing tightly targeted restrictions in affected areas. In a case I recently heard about, a family couldn’t welcome more than 10 people to a funeral service within Winnipeg, so they instead opted to host it 30 minutes outside city limits where it was possible to hold a much larger gathering.
You don’t want to blame people for their decision-making when they’re in the throes of grief, so that’s why it’s even more important that government steps up to protect them from themselves, especially at times when one funeral could kick off a series in quick succession.
Dan Falloon is the sports editor for Pique Newsmagazine and is writing about various topics for The Chief during the pandemic.
