Non-Vaccination and Ableism or How I am Excluded from Attending my Grandmother's Funeral

So, my grandmother died this last weekend.  She was on hospice; it was expected.  Yet there is still some processing to be had.  I cannot go to her funeral.  I have been excluded from her funeral.  I am furious and heart-sore.  

Here's how that happened:  there are members of my family that are not vaccinated.  While enforcing their "right to choose" to not get vaccinated for whatever individual purpose, they might be very focused on their own intentions, but there is an unmentioned impact.  I've heard it repeated that it doesn't hurt anyone else.  And yet, here we are with a clear example.   

I'm immunocompromised.  I have to protect myself.  By choosing to not be vaccinated, that means that they are refusing to make accommodations that respect that need.  It's the same energy as if I were wheelchair bound and asked if I'm going rock climbing with the rest of the family and then to be told that the choice not to go was purely my decision.  The conditions were inhospitable for my needs and then the implication is that I also am the only one to shoulder the blame.  This is ableism.  And there is real hurt here, inflicted by members of my extended family.

So, no, no one has outright told me that I'm not welcome, but their actions have.  If there are no ramps or even handrails on the steps, we exclude structurally without outright saying anything.  If there are no options to meet different dietary needs, we exclude persons from the meal and the community of that space.  If we don't take active steps to protect people with weakened immune systems, then we exclude them from those spaces.  

There is a ground assumption that "my" needs are the same as everyone else's in this way of thinking--when this assumption is then enacted out, this is ableism.  Logically we can recognize that individual needs vary, but there are still parts where signs of this thinking are so firmly entrenched in our surroundings that we don't realize it, until we try to fit a wheelchair through the doorway of a tiny bathroom or try to stand back up and have nothing to grab on to.  If it is "too much work" or "it's too inconvenient" or even "too expensive" to meet someone's needs, then there is a clear signal here that that individual simply isn't welcome.  Eventually, when we exclude those different voices for enough time, those remaining continue to reinforce their version of "normal" and then adjusting to include people again becomes all that much harder.  

We live in a collective society, where all of our decisions impact others around us.  I could make many, many excuses about how inconvenient it is to stop at a red light, but I have agreed to sign that societal contract, which not only protects me but helps protect other people.  Vaccinations are the same--maybe we won't see the personal benefit to ourselves, but we will also not have a six-car collision in our rear-view mirror.  

The decision to get the vaccine and the booster is about community health more than it is about individual health.  It is about seeing people and their needs.  It is about inclusion.  It is an expression of love to other people.  Whatever the specific intention is behind the choice to not be vaccinated, there is a profound impact of silent casualties--missing voices, broken relationships, the cumulative weight of guilting, and, yes, spreading disease and then deflecting the blame around to someone else.  The impact is there, even if one's intentions don't think it should be.  It is there.

I will not bear the risk of spreading Covid to my patients that are already ill and the impossible guilt that would follow.  I will not--after fighting impossibly hard for my current state of health--put my body at risk of developing temporary or long-term issues.  My feelings of frustration and anger in watching others choose to invalidate these concerns are wholly valid.  

I do not shake my fist at some generic idea of Covid; I openly distrust persons who choose not to care about other people, who (amongst other injuries) have denied me the sense of closure that I could have had in going to a funeral.  I am one of many in the last few years that has had to face such a quandary, weighing the emotional, physical, spiritual, and safety needs of situations and gatherings.  

The impact of individual decisions not to vaccinate prolong the crisis, continue to hurt, continue to harm.  Why refusing to not be vaccinated is a hill to (sometimes literally) die on continues to confound me.  At what point is the cost too much?  Is this a cause so worth the pain it is inflicting?  The best-case scenario is that persons who choose not to vaccinate are hurting others out of ignorance.  But that doesn't make the impact go away.  The not-so-good-case scenario is that those persons know they're hurting others and don't care.  If the point I want someone to understand is that they should simply give a damn about other people, I walk away from the unproductive argument.  In other words, I am hoping that the bulk of people that are unvaccinated are ignorant to the broader harms, that maybe I can put words to the trickier parts to process or be a face of a faceless "other."  

Because I feel unseen.  Because I feel unheard.  Because I feel invalidated by the apathy.  And because I know that I am worth more than that, and I know that I am one of many in a screaming chorus of similar hurt.  We are here.  We rail against the idea that it didn't hurt anyone else.