You Did This Revisited

You did this.

Billy Folsom’s wife died yesterday. She did not need to die yesterday. She needed to be in the hospital, and they could not find one that had a bed. You are responsible. Do not come back with your usual drivel. No one with half a brain and a conscience wants to hear the tired but still shocking and disgusting “reasons” why doing what the world is asking, doesn’t need to be done by you, and that your “rights” are being taken away.

You know whose rights were just taken from her? Kim Folsom.

To be clear about this post. I followed Billy on FB for a long time before I decided that I wanted him for my first interview on “On Point” because he was a strong force in CM and during that time seemed like one of the most important voices in the city...really nice guy, cared about his city, reasonable, and had a way of speaking to everyone.

Since that interview I have followed him through his marriage, his happy life with Kim, her illness, their move to Joshua Tree. Even though the posts on FB and the comments of the literally thousands of people who cared about Billy and Kim you could feel the love and respect between them...it was a true love story.

In the middle of the night, I read about Billy’s searching for a hospital bed for Kim, and could not believe it, and then read that she had died.

You literally cannot get away from reading, seeing on TV, reading on the media someone or gangs of people screaming about their rights and freedoms, armed with facts that either do not address the issues or are simply fake and made up by someone who has lost his/her soul justifying their refusal to wear a mask and do all the rest that frankly the world requires of them.

I know them. They in another world are the people who would give you their last dollar, the people who would bring over food if you needed it, take care of your kids, drive you to the hospital, stop by the side of the road and help a stranger. I know them.

I like these people, and therein has been the problem for me, and I suspect millions of others.

Billy’s wife dying looking for a hospital bed jerked me out of thinking in the same way about the people I know. How they are able to spout the things they do, whine endlessly about their rights, prefer their version of science when they have no science background, and justify everything they write and do as a direct correlation to the constitution, their rights, data and stats that come from someone’s fevered brain, I will never understand.

I blame them for Kim’s death and the deaths all over the country of innocent people who have the crazy bad luck to have a medical emergency and cannot find a hospital bed within 100 miles like Billy and Kim.

Although Kim had suffered with cancer for several years, she did not need to die that night. These. people may think they have lost their rights by wearing a mask, distancing, washing their hands, and not going to their favorite bar and restaurant, but Kim really lost her rights....all of them...

She lost her right to live.

Billy lost his wife.