Tami Dies of Covid Delta

The last I heard, Tami had turned a corner and was getting better. However, she was in the hospital for 4 weeks, and that’s never a good sign…

Today her family told everyone that she died last night.

And I just fucking knew it… I had a feeling as soon as I heard she was sick in the hospital with Covid that she wouldn’t make it out again alive. I knew it. When it seemed she might beat it after all, I was elated, but also confused because my spirit told me that wasn’t true.

One LJ Memory from November of 2015:

“Tami drove me to and from therapy without a problem and she was awesome company and refused to take even gas money. YAY! I don’t really want to pay it, as I need it for other things, and $80 a month is really too much. Dave and Cat won’t take money either, so it almost pays for the $65 fine I paid for Shayla dumping me at the last minute.

I told her a little about the therapy I was doing and some of the things I was learning and she really started opening up to me about HER issues and background and body image struggles and it was like I became HER therapist! But I didn’t mind. Maybe my listening to her is how she gets paid back for how she’s helping me. She just wants to express herself and be heard like all of us. Plus, she now knows my sad story and I don’t have to keep going over it. Its– BLAH!– all out now.”

Of course, she and I talked like this every single week I was going to therapy that she drove me– an hour and back from my house (and then she drove a further hour and back to her home in Portland) that we talked about everything and I got an additional hour of therapy just because she was such a great listener and gave me some perspective I needed at the time. We talked about politics and religion and our own personal spiritual experiences and view on the world, and it was pretty different, given my Neopaganism and her Christianity, but we managed a mutual respect and deep compassion through it all. I got to know Tami better than most people in some ways because of this I think.

When the Trump era began, she and I spoke less, but we kept in contact on Facebook and I still talked to her for a few hours by phone once a year. I was going to have her as a guest at Heron House before she moved to Texas/Arkansas, except the pandemic hit and she left before I got a vaccine. We still planned for her to come out at least once at some point when she visited what remained of her family in the Portland, Oregon area one of these days.

When she first moved to that area of the country, she said, “I’m in the REAL America now!” in this self-righteous way on Facebook and I felt dread. I knew she’d totally bought into the far-right bullshit machine. She joined Parler when lies started getting censored on Facebook and Twitter, and again– I felt fear for her. I was also beside myself in anger because Tami’s not stupid, and neither is Robin, but they weren’t able to stand up against their peers who were following the wrong leaders and the wrong information. I knew believing this kind of propaganda can get you hurt or killed.

And it did.

I know she believed it when the right-wing, red-state spin doctors said vaccines and masks were bad. Further, I knew I couldn’t reach her to suggest otherwise. I’ve gone down that road a couple of times and never win. My opinions would never be more important to her than those of her husband, children, pastor, siblings, and other conservative friends. Against that army, my voice is a whisper in the wind.

Now… so is she.