This is, obviously, exceedingly personal. You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to. And I apologize for it not being… “Newsworthy”.
I’m mainly just angry. And I think this shows, very clearly and close to home, just how shitty all of this has been.
Initially, I couldn’t visit because I was, and am, “inadequately vaxxed”. Then they made it boosters. Then the rules seemingly changed, but my family, my goddamn family, man, prevented me from going in there to see him, except for his birthday last year. Without outwardly saying it, they did it to punish me for my… “Non-compliance”. 😔
Then we all got Covid. But I couldn’t get an “exemption”, because life is shit.
And then, guess what? The whole ward of the nursing home got it anyway, despite none of us (me, or my father, who is “quadruple vaxxed”, or other non-blood relatives) visiting, and despite them being thrice or more “jabbed”…
So, being frail and sickly, the inevitable happened. Though it is important to note that he did not die of Covid, and was allegedly testing negative (having already had it), up to the last few days…
The nursing home wouldn’t let me see him because of the outbreak. My family (mother is his main “guardian”) also didn’t want me visiting (again), and because we don’t even share the same last name (obviously, maternal grandfather), and I can’t afford a lawyer, I hadn’t been able to secure a workaround…
It’s fucking awful. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I haven’t seen him in like, nine months or more. And my family blame me for that. Me.
The worst thing, though, was my Dad’s response: I asked him whether he had been in since I had, seeing as he is “quadruple vaxxed”, and super paranoid about Coof…
To which he said “No, and why would I? I saw him before that.”
As in, no, he didn’t want to, and even though he could, he couldn’t be bothered. This is the same man who attacked me for not visiting enough, for being unvaxxed, for not “supporting your mother enough, at this time”, and for not visiting his mother, who still lives at home, enough…
I just… Fuck these people, man. Fuck my entire family, at this point…
Tl;dr, my grandfather died, and the (supposedly coof-related) evils of the system, and of my family, prevented me from saying goodbye. For months… 😞
Sympathies. I can relate, because I have an aunt in a care home here in Ireland. This country is extremely cucked with regards to covid and vaccinations, but for a stretch until late last year - until next door Britain reversed their more authoritarian stances, not unrelatedly - it looked like it was going to get even worse and we would go the Australia route. At that time, the care home sent out a message or two announcing a change in policy, which said that I wouldn't be able to visit my aunt if I was unvaxxed. I visit her weekly, tend to basically all her affairs, withdraw money for her, etc. since she's unable, so this really wasn't viable.
Like your grandfather's home, they've gone into a kind of lockdown with limited or window-based visiting several times, and I'm pretty sure this was a result of covid brought into the facility by a fully vaxxed carer (indeed one admitted to me on the phone last year that he was vaxxed and it didn't prevent him catching covid, so one of those lockdowns may have been because of him).
When speaking to the carers on the phone about this, I announced clearly and uncompromisingly that I wasn't getting vaxxed, that I considered it useless at best, so what now? Going to deny me from seeing the person I do everything for? Hearing this they wrung their hands, consulted internally for a bit, and then let me know that actually, this directive comes from on high, but it's sort of discretionary, it's not binding, and we know who you are, so I guess, just, continue to visit anyway... and you know, heh, whatever I guess ¯_(ツ)_/¯
So with that, and Ireland's gradual shift towards a reversal away from the vaccine pass and other retarded aspects of the lockdowns, I was able to resume normal visits. I did have to provide a negative test for a couple of weeks before they dropped that policy too. But I sometimes reflect with dread on where I would have been forced to take things if they had dug in to an extreme, or if they eventually head in that direction again. Since then I've had one of the carers admit to me that she's unvaxxed, too, so there are sometimes sympathisers in unexpected places, even healthcare facilities in '90% vaccinated' (-who knows if this is true) Ireland.
Through this time I was already very well-equipped with knowledge about the shittiness of the vaxx and I suggest you should be too. It might not do much good when your entire country jumps the parapet and goes full gaylord, as in the case of Australia, but in the context of petty bureaucrats who know you and regularly have to meet your gaze, being able to logically and viciously eviscerate their proposed policies might go some way to making sure they exercise 'discretion'. Certainly I think it could help in arguments with family like yours. Nobody close to you is going to keep bringing it up if they keep getting humiliated and sent away redfaced every time.
As unvaxxed, when faced with the possibility of being shut out of aspects of life due to this status, we really have no option to be quiet and polite about this sort of thing when faced with it. There is no room to retreat; as you've seen, the battlefront extends up to and into every person's family. It is a war being waged on our psyche by absolute fucking retards who don't deserve spit. Humiliation and shame is the primary weapon that worked on most of them in getting the jab, so it can't hurt applying some of that in the arguments you use in your own defence. For a while last year, whenever I saw a cop car in the high street I would wonder how long it would be until their duties would include checking my vaxx pass. I had to consider what I would do in such a society and I had some firm answers in mind. Well we didn't end up there, yet, but with anyone who's prepared to waddle into that hellhole willingly, and make your life difficult through their own cultish obeisance, you have to be prepared to enlighten them on what absolute cunts they are, and how unbending you are.