#COVID19AB Suburban Update 02/02/22

The final decision is coming Saturday from dear Premier Kenney. He's calling it, "a prudent decision based on the latest data." This should be interesting. I believe Alberta will proceed with the second phase of the province's reopening plan and it's a good step, again, as long as we're going off the data... y'know that factual stuff with numbers our Premier doesn't seem too familiar with?

Last Monday I returned to the office for the first time since September 2021 and noticed a change in attitude in my clients. From saying things like, "we'll get there if we work together," to being completely over it/tired//done with all things COVID-19. Just yesterday I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things I needed to make my husband a special birthday dinner (1 bag = 100$). There were quite a number of people already not wearing a mask in CO-OP. And the funny thing is CO-OP was one of the grocery stores who until now, took masking quite seriously. The tone has changed a lot in the last three weeks. Enter: #FreedomConvoy - a movement that involved a lot of Albertans. And they are angrier than and people I've ever seen.

I'd love to know "who" exactly the #FreedomConvoy is for. Is it just the baby boomers or the babies?

My own Mother has been aggressively vocal - saying things that don't make much sense (like, "I regret getting the vaccine at all") and posting shit on Facebook that she suddenly identifies with because like all of us, she's tired of the mandatory mask bylaws and the work-from-home. If I question her or begin to argue she becomes extremely defensive and it makes me feel as though I'm talking to a truck driver in support of the #FreedomConvoy. It's all pretty sad to me. Even though she was born after the baby boomer generation she's 100% on the bandwagon. Pretty sure she's not talking to me right now because I sent her a text the other day saying: for the love of God, take a break from Facebook please. 

Growing up in a Conservative household in Alberta, exactly zero members of our immediate family made money in the O&G industry. Mom's Mom owned a hair salon and Grandpa drove a tow truck after his partner in a concrete business moved to Texas. According to my Mother, Trudeau is responsible for all damages to our economy - that is, Alberta's. She claims Premier Kenney has done the best he could throughout the pandemic, with the knowledge he had of #COVID19AB and yet our modeling was doomed from the second "wave." Not to mention the war he waged against Alberta's teachers and nurses at the start of the pandemic which led to an overwhelmed healthcare system. And not to mention he is under investigation STILL by the RCMP for how he was elected to his party. Mom has grown a specific hatred towards Trudeau and thinks Trudeau is punishing Alberta. Meanwhile for the last forty years, Conservatives have been making assloads of money in this province and investing sweet fuck all into any other industry. I heard Kenney this week announce a nearly two-billion-dollar investment into the Red Deer Hospital to distract from the fact he is STILL handing out money to fund new charter schools in Alberta when the public school has had a budget freeze for how long, again?

If you checked the type of news I consume, most of it would be leaning left. But when you have an extreme-right side of the political scale, like the hateful people honking their horns and declaring a #FreedomConvoy for the "rights of Canadians" it makes me wonder, exactly whose freedoms are you "fighting" for? Just because I'm more liberal than you doesn't mean to say I love Justin Trudeau. Sure, we can blame him for not shutting down the border sooner. Blame Trudeau because you couldn't vacation in the last two years. Travel abroad is a fucking luxury. You could have gone anyway because we weren't locked down. It might have cost you more time and money, but the point is you could have left. 

So what is Phase 2 anyway? The biggest thing, which has a lot of Albertans angry is the mandatory indoor mask requirement - that will be gone. Indoor and outdoor gatherings will no longer have a limit and the mandatory work-from-home requirement will be lifted. I guess it includes removing any remaining requirements for schools as well. Oh, and also capacity limits on large venues - those will be gone. Again, lots baby boomers - sorry, babies, are so looking forward to all of this.

It's no coincidence the REP (Restrictions Exemption Program) ended over a week ago and more and more people started entering an indoor public place without a mask on. This is how Premier Kenney governs: he waits to see happens and then takes up the podium (always late, of course) to react. Earlier this month he did say Alberta would continue with the reopening plan by the end of February if COVID-19 hospitalizations were trending downward. I personally cannot even look at the man so I haven't been watching his last few press conferences. The man has no respect for anyone who doesn't drive a pickup truck.

Speaking of coincidence, this is probably the biggest one to date and so I must update...

Before I went into CO-OP I drove to Sobeys and found the channel letters gone from the front of the building. The windows and automatic doors were boarded up and it looked like a construction site. Sobeys CLOSED... I wonder how that happens. As I'm leaving the shopping complex I see this white Dodge pickup truck pull in and park in front of a cannabis dispensary. The first thing I notice when the driver gets out is he leaves the truck idling. Good for you man, giving no fucks about the environment! The second thing I noticed, of course how could I miss the classic bumper sticker Alberta's baby boomers love. Whoever made this is probably one of my customers but I really couldn't care less about that. The best part about all this is the dude is the picture perfect: middle-aged; 5ft 5inches tall. 

Fuck You Trudeau, Thank You Very Much For The Legal Marijuana! Coincidence? No. Alberta is just an ironic province.

Relearning grief or really learning grief

Woke up thinking of my Dad today. I knew I would.

He's been gone 14 years now. You can call it a death anniversary because that's what it is.

I think the first time I wrote about my Dad's death in this blog was one year, one month, and one day later. Reading those words back I can't help but feel like a poser. Trying to be so strong after what was more than likely the most surreal and difficult year of my life was a stretch. Even if the challenges we face in life are what build our true characters, death of a parent when you are a child fucking sucks. Still, I consider myself lucky to have had the support of one extraordinary mother and an incredible family during that dark time. Friends were there but if they didn't know what I was going through it became awkward to talk about Dad's death and grief itself.

Less than a week after we found out Dad was suddenly gone, my celebrity crush was found dead too. I remember standing in line at the Safeway when I came across the breaking news, scrolling through Twitter. Heath Ledger was only 28 years old. Dad was 41. I grieved both men for very different reasons. One whose love I knew yet didn't think I needed. The other's love I'd so dearly wanted and never known. 

The second time I wrote about Dad's death in this blog was a year and a half after he passed. Years later I wrote very bluntly, 'sometimes life isn't all that beautiful but to make up for that, there's death'. As I sit here typing away on the 14th death anniversary I can't quite make out where my head was at in that moment. Being a 17 year old is especially difficult for anybody. A 17 year old experiencing the death of a parent has an extra layer of darkness that makes seeing clearly almost impossible. Year after year passes and you don't celebrate your milestones together. There's no way I would have recognized myself from all those years ago if I ran into me on the street. 

As a young woman I was yet a child. I craved the recklessness that goes along with youth; had expectations of myself that were hard to keep up with. I'm 29 and a half years old today and there's no chance I'd pretend to know what it is I want besides good health. Back then in my mind I'd had it all figured out. Thought I was going to be an anchor on the news at 17. Admittedly I had my own car; a job in marketing; respectable grades; a solid group of friends; full-time hobbies. I was arrogant or proud or whatever I thought I was. Dad's death hadn't hit me yet and those words were written shortly after Swine Flu (H1N1) was declared a global pandemic... after Michael Jackson died. Written back when I didn't really know what grief even was. It was mostly just denial, or kidding myself, or shock. 

Grief is a weird thing to go through. I grieved Dad in my own way as a 15-year-old and it's as if I'm grieving him in new ways as the years go by. Relearning grief or really learning grief, perhaps.

If grief is the response to loss, when you lose someone at a formative age you don't get to choose how that loss affects you in a behavioural or social sense. At a time when you are meant to find yourself it's as if you've lost the only parts of you that were understood. Rather than looking for your next place in the world, you fumble around with bits and pieces of what you knew -pieces that have been changed forever. 

My way through the unexpected death of a parent is still ongoing. The good news is I am finding a way through it all. Today I am a happy young woman in a healthy relationship and I wouldn't change a damn thing. At some point in the next 10 or 12 weeks I'll become someone's Mother. And I know I have some issues that cause me to react very quickly and sometimes too negatively, based on my experience as a young person who had to deal with the loss of a parent. Some might call it cynical: my way of thinking nowadays. It isn't so much I don't trust things could be better than anticipated. My character flaw is more of an inner struggle to avoid thinking of the worst possible outcomes before anything even happens. Am I waiting for the bad news? No. I just know that it can (and will) come at any time.

Till my own death I take great comfort knowing Dad would not be falling for a lot of this shit. Not saying he'd be against a vaccine for COVID-19, or that the coronavirus is a hoax because he wasn't oblivious but there would absolutely be some way he'd make light of today and the global "situation". And it gives me hope one day I will know exactly where I need to be with my grief. For now I'll work on getting there. And I'll keep writing.