A memory of family trauma forever etched in my mind for the past 70 years was when my vivacious Aunt Meg, then about 35 years old, became afflicted with polio. Destined to spend weeks in an iron lung, she was to forever remain crippled and reliant on her cane, never to dance again.
Recently a friend — a conspiracy theorist, anti-masker and anti-vaxer — confronted me, asking if I supported COVID vaccination. When I responded by attempting to relate my Aunt Meg’s story, he turned away, made some disparaging comment as to my naive ignorance and abruptly departed.
Days later, I received a hostile telephone message from the same gentleman haranguing me about the death of a woman who reportedly died of Covid after being vaccinated. He ended his message by expressing his view that I now had “poisoned my blood.”
Insulted and offended, I made it abundantly clear that henceforth I wasn’t going to tolerate any further communication of any nature with this individual. I wanted to say to him that when the final question is asked and tally made of those who died because they refused vaccinations, as opposed those lives lost because they did, “… the answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind …”, and what I’ve lost is a person I thought to be a friend.
I believe that it was his mind, not my blood that has been poisoned.
Ken Wyllie
Robson, BC