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It’s been a while. Three months, probably closer to four.  My last but one post was entitled, “When The Tears Have Dried.” That hasn’t yet happened, but life goes on, or so we are told. The isolation hasn’t helped. Covid-19 hasn’t helped. I’m fully vaccinated now but then along comes Delta, and we’re told even the vaccinated should, “take precautions,” whatever the hell that means.

I suppose the truth is they, whoever ‘they’ are’, have no more idea  of what ‘take precautions’ means, than you or I have. The British are now ‘advised’ to wear a mask in public. Judging from the audience at the Royal Albert Hall for the First Night Of The Proms concerts, where at least a third, and possibly as many as half the occupants of that grandiose building were without the requisite face attire, advice is something the British, and probably most of the other human inhabitants of the planet, do not set much store by.

It’s seems to have been forgotten that wearing a mask will not protect the wearer from catching this disease. What it does is protect others from our saliva, which may be contaminated without us having symptoms.  So the person shunning the inconvenience of a mask is putting at risk everyone around them, even those considerate enough to be wearing one.

This is hardly surprising. Only recently I was reading that we should not get mad at those who refuse the vaccinations. It will create a divided society, they say. We need to gently persuade them.

How many will they kill before they are persuaded? How many will suffer agonies from Long Covid before the dolts and fools, the brainwashed, self-centered, idiots, can be persuaded to comply?

Then, of course, there are the vaccine deniers, the Covid deniers, and as Arwa Mahdawi informed us in the Guardian yesterday, the vaccine hypocrites:

“The hottest summer accessories for people who don’t want to die a horrible death but are ashamed to admit it? A wig and dark glasses. It has been reported that some people in Missouri, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US, are wearing disguises to their vaccine appointments because they are terrified their anti-vaxxer friends and family might find out that they are protecting themselves from a deadly virus…”

Local health care providers are even advertising ‘discreet’ areas for those who want the vaccine but are afraid of being spotted getting the jab by their friends and neighbours. What the fuck!

“A local healthcare provider has even started advertising “discreet” appointments for people who want to keep their shot secret. “If you are afraid of walking into a public area where you might be seen getting your vaccine, we will work to accommodate even more of a private setting for you to receive your vaccine,” Ozarks Healthcare said in a statement.”

There’s been few voices brave enough to call out these fuckers who risk killing people, or causing them untold misery from Long Covid. Mahdawi is one of them. R J Adams is another. These people are shitehawks. They whisper among the dark places on the internet, and yes, Zuckerberg, you do fuck all to stop it? They form little cliques with their equally moronic, anarchistic, friends online or in the same street, and band together to feel important.

They are important. They are so important they should be offered their own special choice: do your civic duty and get vaccinated, or be taken, along with your other anti-vaxx compatriots, to an isolated, enclosed area where you can be kept to infect each other and away from society.

They rail about their “freedoms” while denying the rest of us the opportunity to free ourselves of this viral menace and return to normal living. If we ever achieve that it will be in spite of these antisocial parasites and their misguided, brainwashed, ideals.

My wife did not die from Covid-19. She died of her cancer. She wanted to die in my arms, but she was denied that right by the US government who refused to allow me to enter the United States and be with my dying wife. “Citizens and Permanent Residents Only,” was my response from the US Embassy in Paris, “I’m sorry, but there is a global pandemic, you know!” Thank you, madam, for your misplaced sympathy.

She may as well have died from Covid-19. It was that which prevented us being together at the end.

So I have no sympathy with the ignorant fuckers who continue to allow this dreadful disease to spread by their crackpot attitudes. They refuse the right to life to far too many by their cockeyed ideas of “freedom”.

No, my tears have not yet dried, but to my grief has been added a burning anger at those who choose to believe their individual ‘rights’ are more important than the lives of thousands of their fellow human beings.

 

 

Grief and writing make bad bedfellows. Part of being a writer is to put down on paper an expression of one’s feelings, either directly, or in some form of fictitious novel or short story.

The only way I find to carry on with life is by keeping busy and not allowing the thoughts that cause grief to rise up from deep within, bringing with them the anguish and accompanying tears that prevent even a short sentence from making it onto the page.

There’s so much happening in the world that I want to write about, but mostly I need to write about her.  Not to do so, to concentrate on world affairs: Boris Johnson’s  disgusting abuse of his governmental position, his toadying up to Modi of India now that Trump is no longer a powerful US presidential ally, the sudden relaxation of rules in the western hemisphere that protected people  from Covid, while the virus still rages and mutates elsewhere, and over it all the looming threat of catastrophic climate change, these are subjects overdue to be aired, but to do so feels almost traitorous, as though turning my back and walking away from the woman I loved, cherished, and cared for, for twenty years.

No, the time is not yet right. Johnson, Modi, all the other motherfuckers damaging our lives and the our planetary home by their selfish lust for power, must wait awhile before R J Adams can turn his attention back to them.

One day she will release him. But not yet. There are still memories that will not go away, tears still to be shed, in private, late at night, or early on waking, or during solitary meals, the chair where once she sat, now unoccupied.

There is one element I’ve come to hate with venom. It’s the marketing ploy that defines cancer as some evil monster to be battled against, the pink ribbons designed to show we are all united in our war against, “The BIG C.”

“The Great Stand Up To Cancer Bake-Off.” Fuck Off! It’s not some playground bully. It’s a fucking illness. The only people battling against it are doctors and scientists trying to find cures, and they’d consider it neither a battle nor a war.\

Most of these self-righteous idiots, with their ribbons and stickers, and anything else they can think of to advertise themselves as pathetic individuals, have never suffered from the disease. The crap they come out with serves only to make those who become terminal cancer victims feel as though they’re losers, that they’ve not done something right, they’ve not fought hard enough, and that’s why they’re going to die.

A message to the pink ribbon brigade: Stop it! If you want to raise money for cancer research, fine. Find another way. It started as false American over-sentimentality. They have an abundance of it. It spread like a cancer. It makes cancer sufferers feel inadequate. They cannot fight the disease, or stand up to it.  One day, pink ribbon wearer, you may find that out.

My late-wife was in total agreement with what I’m writing. She hated the idea of a ‘war against cancer’. Why not a war against heart disease, or motor neuron disease, or any of the other killers of humankind. Why not a war against the corporations that make the crap we have to eat these days, full of poisonous chemicals, or a war against Monsanto and their deadly products, Perdue Pharma for oxycontin, and all the other purveyors of opiates that have killed or ruined the lives of millions throughout the world?

Get a grip! It’s not a war against anything. It’s a usually terminal disease that cannot be fought by those suffering from it.

As my wife said to me when she was told of her stage four ovarian cancer, “We can only leave it to the doctors, my love, and hope for the best.”

The doctors did their best. They didn’t fail, but sadly were unable to save her, despite the ‘wonder-drug,’ the ‘miracle-cure,’ Lynparza, manufactured by a pharmaceutical giant whose name is very much in the news of late – AstraZeneca.

But that’s another story.

 

 

 

My last post here was on March 15th. On March 18th my dear and much loved wife, Trish, was taken from us by cancer. She was in America at the time and I was denied access to that country by the US government due to Covid-19 regulations, so was unable to be with her in her last days.

I was not alone. My heart goes out to all those many people who were denied the right to be with their loved ones at the end, due to such regulations. Necessary, or not, they have inflicted enormous distress and hardship on those affected, and denied closure.

I will recommence postings here once the tears have dried. It may be a little while.

Thank you to those who sent condolences. They were much appreciated.

RJ.

Rest In Peace, My Lovely Girl