No. 18 - the slowest decline

For the second time in six months, my fridge has conked out.

When it happens, it’s a slow process. You start by maybe thinking to yourself that the milk tastes a bit warm, or maybe the fridge isn’t as cold as it usually is. At the same time, the freezer gets very, very cold.

Then, someone gets food poisoning. In November, it was me. Hallowe’en night, I ate some pumpkin curry that I had made a week previous. The food poisoning hit me hard and I was out for two days.

It took me a few days before I realized that my illness was connected to a fridge that stopped working.

We decided to get the fridge fixed rather than replaced, being good environmental activists. It took nine weeks — the part was delated because of supply chains, COVID-19, etc. etc. Our family of four had to get through the holidays with a mini-fridge. It was annoying but it was fine. The fridge was working again by early January.

When it happened again this week — food poisoning and all — I couldn’t help but think about the parallels of a fridge slowly dying with the moment we’re in right now. Things, everywhere, seem to be getting worse. A cab that doesn’t show up. Luggage that doesn’t make it. A 20-hour wait in an ER. A three-month delay to see your family doctor. A five-year wait to even get a family doctor. Glasses that are usually ready in eight days now take 21. A passport that never arrives. Food costs that hide behind inflation to inflate the profits of a few families in Canada. Sky-high gas prices that the provinces of Alberta and NL rely on to fund their provincial budgets, but that are driving working class people further into the ground.

It seems to be a million things; many insignificant, many significant but all adding layers on layers to an already traumatized population. And, all while another COVID-19 wave sweeps Canada, a wave where we know less than any other before it.

The fridge metaphor ends there. I might have another stretch where I have no fridge. I will have to buy a new one. I’ll lose everything that was in the fridge. But, it’ll be fixed.

The fix for everything else however will be harder than buying a new fridge. It feels overwhelming.

I think we too often we imagine massive shifts in society happening in sudden events. The pandemic will one day be over. A cataclysmic climate moment will kill us all. The health system will collapse. My fridge wil explode.

But things don’t happen like that. They move slowly and steadily towards destruction.

The good news is that a slow decline is easier to stop than a single, massive event. Sure, we can’t just buy a new fridge, but we can struggle against these forces and bend them to our will. That’s the only good news because everything else — especially the amount of work that’s needed for our struggles to be successful.