Usually, I write a weekly editorial in the voice of The Beachcomber, giving context to current events based on the shared values of islanders and this newspaper.

Readers know that frequent topics are the island’s response to COVID, the workings of our public agencies including our school and fire districts, and other community touchpoints.

It is the same this week, but now, I’d like to share a personal story that illuminates some of these same concerns.

My elderly mother, who lives in Illinois, has been visiting me since September, and last Thursday, in the wee hours of the morning, she fell. The awful thud of it woke me up, and when I rushed to her, she said she could not get up.

We called 911, and soon, heroes arrived at our door. The paramedics were skilled, compassionate and strong, and knew just what to do. At that hour of the morning, no ferries were running, so they left and returned in time to get her on the 4:05 a.m. ferry and take her by ambulance to a hospital on the mainland.

For the next 12 hours, my mother and I stayed in the emergency room of that hospital — a chaotic place, with the hallways lined with people on gurneys. We were lucky to get a curtained-off room. My mother, as we had suspected, had a badly broken hip.

On the way to the hospital, I’d been told that the hospital allowed patients to have one visitor per day, and called my older sister in Illinois and told her that. She immediately booked a plane ticket and was in the air, speeding towards us, within hours.

Later in the day, as I waited with my mother for her hip surgery, I was told something different: due to increasing cases of COVID-19, the hospital was no longer allowing any visitors.

Throughout the pandemic, I’ve heard of and even written about people who were not allowed to visit their loved ones in the hospital, and felt great sympathy. But when this news came to me personally, it broke me, filling every corner of my mind with despair and rage.

How could it come to this, that we are still in this COVID hell, almost two years after it began?

I could not stop sobbing, thinking of my mother’s confusion and pain upon waking up from surgery and having no loving family member there to hold her hand. I knew it was possible she could die alone, and the pain of that was indescribable.

Luckily, a doctor and nurse intervened the next day, and my sister has been able to be at my mother’s bedside since last Thursday — she was granted a rare exemption to the visitor’s policy because my mother has dementia. But only one person is allowed that exemption. I have only talked to Mom on the phone since.

Her survival, as I write this, is still far from certain, but the most important thing is that she is surrounded by love, as everyone should be as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

I tell you this story because it could happen to you and your loved ones.

I tell you this story so that you will know that things you read about in this newspaper, including staffing levels in our fire district, are important. When my mother fell, the district was only “two calls deep,” meaning that volunteers and other on-island staff would have needed to be summoned if another call came in while two EMTs were tied up with my mom and me for hours. (I know this because I am a nosy reporter, who can’t stop herself from asking questions, even when I am riding in an ambulance with my mother in the middle of the night.)

Just hours before my mother fell, I had attended a Vashon Island Fire & Rescue commissioners’ meeting on Zoom, where I learned that all of the district’s first responders are now being tested for COVID-19 prior to taking duty on their shifts. I want you to know that reassuring fact, as well.

I want you to know that the hospitals are full again, and visitation is highly restricted. One nurse, in the ER, repeatedly told me to keep on my mask, not that I ever took it off.

“There’s a lot of COVID in here,” she said, explaining that a very high number of people coming in that day were testing positive for the virus.

Be safe. Stay out of the hospital. Take an interest in how the virus is currently spreading in our community, and behave and advocate in a way that slows that spread. Stay informed, and follow the expert advice of our Medical Reserve Corps.

Say thank you to an EMT.

And if you still can, give your mother a hug. Please do that, for me.

— Elizabeth Shepherd, Editor