Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 29
I’m startled awake at 4am. I don’t know what’s disturbed me. I get up to pee and see what looks like a figure standing in the bay window in the front room. On closer inspection, it’s just a shadow where the curtains meet in the middle, layered one on top of the other.
I pee and get back into bed. I’m not sure I properly shut the bedroom door so get up and re-close it, making sure the latch catches.
As I’m drifting back to sleep I hear the sound of the door slowly opening. It makes a loud enough sound to wake my partner, who asks what’s happened. I tell them it’s just the wind.
I close the door again. They fall back to sleep and I lie awake for another hour, wondering who has come to visit us in the night. I worry I may have inadvertently brought someone home with me from Abney Park.
I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. What I do know is experiences I’ve had that I can’t explain. Times when the hair on the back of my neck stands on end and I’m left paralysed by fear. This doesn’t come close to the worst of them, but my fear is close to the surface these days.
There’s a buddha I often call upon in times like these. His mantra is meant to help dispel funky energy and purify the space. I chant it quietly to myself, like a lullaby, and eventually fall back to sleep.
In the morning my partner tells me there’s been an article in The Sun about Ian, their colleague, who died last week of COVID-19. He was in St. Thomas’ hospital at the same time as Boris, on a ventilator for 10 days before he died.
The article says he was the first British Airways crew to die from the virus. He worked for them for 35 years.
The article criticizes British Airways for keeping their flight attendants on a rotating system, randomly selected. Even after some were volunteering to fly in order to spare those that were more vulnerable. Ian was more vulnerable.
Not only did he work at my partner’s charity, but also counseled BA staff as part of their in-house mental health programme. He was a talented counsellor, well loved.
He was also really good at pantomime. My partner shows me a video of him dressed up on a stage, working the crowd, getting lots of laughs. Making people happy. His colleagues at BA described his as a radiant supernova. A black, gay, flamboyant star gone too soon.
I spend the morning writing and after lunch we head out for a walk. A quick lap around Hackney Downs before I need to be on a Zoom call. As we walk my partner tells me more about Ian. I can tell things are sinking in a bit more.
We eye a quiet spot in the corner of the park, tucked into some hedges and under a couple of pine trees, well out of the wind, and decide to lay in the grass for a few minutes. To make up for being moved on too quickly the day before.
Above clouds are quickly whipping past, the sun intermittently peeking out from behind them. I ask my partner if they can see a turtle that’s now turning into a dragon. We play this game for a little while longer before moving on.
In the afternoon I call my sister. She and the other ICU nurses are up to three patients each, when they usually have one. I mention to her an article I read about paramedics in NYC who have pinned photos of their smiling faces on the outside of their PPE so patients know what they look like and can connect with them more easily.
She says they’ve asked the hospital if they can do the same. The administration has suggested they use the photos from their ID badges but my sister’s looks like a mug shot. No, they need to take new photos, but it’s so far down on the priority list we’ll probably have a vaccine first.
She tells me how the hospital has been repurposing staff from other departments. Operating room nurses are now in the ICU. They require constant guidance and supervision.
Physical therapists are being trained to turn patients over into the prone position, which takes 5-6 people. She says it would make more sense for the operating room nurses to do that, as they are already trained. The physical therapists could be helping those who come off ventilators to get their strength back.
She’s going to bring it up in a meeting but doesn’t have a lot of confidence they’ll listen to her. What she does have confidence in is the possibility that if enough of her colleagues raise the same concerns, they will be heard. There is power in numbers.
After dinner we watch the last episode of Unorthodox. It turns out the main character’s mother also left their community because of an impossible marriage and losing her daughter in a custody battle. She now lives with her lover, another woman, in Germany.
I feel moved by the courage it takes to live a life true to oneself. I am sure that is what Ian did and the world has been left a little bit better because of it.
I also know that’s what I’ve done. I remember when I first came out of the closet. My father’s initial response was that he worried that life would be harder for me. I decide I’ll take the hard road over passive resignation any day.
A life half lived is not worth living.