For The Love Of Dazelle

by Michal Gray Griffith

If money is your God, then this family was poor, but if Love is your gauge, then her family was rich.

Dazelle, their oldest child, had drawn a difficult fate, yet when we met her, she was tackling tragedy with courage, grace, and the mature wisdom of many critically ill children; her mind was as sharp as her wit, but then the innocence of her youth was also apparent. She had yet to have her first kiss, and was yearning to go back to timezone. She was like an old soul, in a young body, and that body was failing. 

She was so weak, that after coming down to the street to check out our bus, she collapsed and had to be carried back inside by her father, Josh. 

Here, she spent her time, between hospital admissions, drawing birds, and turtles and flowers, using all these bright colours; hues from a healthier life, a life she couldn’t see from her armchair, where she sat in her warm coat, connected to the oxygen that was keeping her alive.

When she was twelve, she’d lived on a farm, where she rode motorbikes and played rugby with her three younger brothers. Then, her mother claims, Dazelle was diagnosed with leukemia after she took the Gardasil vaccine.

It was now she began her slow, and incredibly painful journey to a recovery that was never guaranteed.

A bone marrow transplant would cure the Leukemia, but then the donor’s DNA began attacking Dazelle’s lungs, mistaking them for an infection. It was so relentless that soon Dazelle’s only hope was a double lung transplant.

To be suitable for the bone marrow transplant, she’d had to retake all her childhood vaccinations, but to get on the transplant list for her new lungs, she would have to agree to take four Covid vaccinations, and it was now that the world first heard of Dazelle, because for some reason, this soft spoken, and sick young woman, said ‘No’.

Without the transplant her death was all but assured, so why not take the risk? Lots of people had taken it without any side effects, so why wouldn’t she take it? Were her parents anti vaxxers?

This was why we were here.

In a desperate attempt to get the hospital to relent, her parents had reached out to the media. They weren’t interested, so then Josh contacted the alternative media.

The First Time We met Dazelle.

In his first online interview, Josh let us know that his family was in dire straights. Following the meeting with the transplant Doctor, where they were given the ultimatum, Dazelle, who up to then had been fuelling her fight via a stubborn belief that she would not only recover, but grow old, had been stuck in her room for four days, depressed and preparing for the end.

But during our conversation, Dazelle agreed to come on the live interview, and share with us her remarkable dream.

We asked Dazelle to draw herself as an older women, instead she drew her spirit.

Months prior, Dazelle had been placed in an induced coma. Her parents had been informed that she would not survive, but as they grappled with this news, Dazelle was walking in a place where there was no pain. She was tired, and the sky was full of shooting stars. Finally she came to an illuminated bridge. On the other side, silhouettes of people were kindly calling her across, so she went to join them, only to be stopped by a man with long hair, who rested a hand on her shoulder. He told her that he didn’t want her to cross the bridge; instead, he wanted her to go back.

She now woke up, and after the tubes were removed from her mouth, she asked her overwhelmed mother who was Ely or Elo something? This, she claimed, was the name of the man.

This interview would be the first of many that would see Dazelle become a symbol for both sides.

For the compliant, she was the delusional child of cooker parents, who were so against vaccinations, they were prepared to watch their daughter die. For the non-compliant, she was a young woman holding on to her right to choose what went into her body.

We were here now, to ascertain which was true.

After I managed to get Dazelle alone, I asked her why she wouldn’t take it, and if it was her parents who were influencing her?

Josh carrying his daughter back into their house after she’d collapsed outside, when she wanted to check out our bus.

She told me it was her decision. In her reasoning, she had taken everything that they had offered her up to now, and that she had reacted badly to everything. Now, a strong intuition was advising her not to take this, and she was listening.

Later, I would ask her again if she’d changed her mind. I told her it wasn’t an issue, and if she had changed her mind, let’s do it. But once again, she said no. Though this time, I could see she deeply understood the enormity of her decision, as could her parents, who continued to respect her decision. That said, I believe both of them would have taken her to get vaccinated, the moment she changed her mind.

If covid had been as deadly as they initially claimed, and or, if the vaccines had been all that they were sold to us as, then all this story would have needed, to be resolved in the favour of life, was some calm advice from reasonable heads, but instead, because we were all trapped in a crazy time, this story descended into the fear driven insanity of a religious war.

One side worshiping the miracle of MRNA vaccines. A religion whose believers were now morally prepared to punish heretics, like Dazelle. And our side, who the other side called a cult. Were we? Or could we see that if the circumstances were different, Dazelle could have been/ be our daughter? Or could we simply see that Dazelle was a young woman, a gift, and why would we, as a nation, risk losing such a precious gift, because she wouldn’t tick a vaccination box?      

When the jabs were being rolled out, twelve-year-olds were allowed to take it without their parents’ consent, or knowledge, and socially that was ok, but here, a seventeen-year-old young woman was not allowed, in their eyes, to decline. They believed her parents should force her to take them, and because they wouldn’t, they were being savagely attacked.  

Here lies a difficult question. Why would someone, who had, questionably, spent time on the outskirts of heaven, a young woman, now on her third chance at life, and desperate to live, decide not to take the vaccine? A decision she knew was a death sentence?

Despite my time with her, I can’t answer this.

But the real question is ours.

Two days before she left us, we learned from another young woman who needed a kidney transplant, but was also unjabbed, that she had now received a new kidney and was doing well.

She told me that she’d sat before the transplant Doctors and pleaded her case. They had informed her that there was no official mandate requiring anyone to have any Covid vaccines to be on the transplant lists.  

The decision to not allow Dazelle on to the list was not made by God, or the hospital, it was made by doctors.

Now, despite an army of people praying for her, even in Japan people were praying for her, Dazelle is gone. 

If Dazelle had been allowed on the list, she knew that she was so weak that she could have died on the operating table. But she told me that she was ok with this. That she would rather die fighting to live, than waiting here to die.

The next time I met Dazelle, she would be trying to grow a jewellery business from her hospital bed. She was making bracelets out of coloured beads that we, and many others, were helping to market. She was determined to help her family with the financial burden of her care.

Her last wishes, beyond surviving, were to visit her beloved timezone, and to feel the sunshine, you take for granted, on her face.  

Two wishes that our Lucky Country, with all our wealth and expertise, could not make happen.

Why?

This is a question we may all have to individually answer, if the man that Dazelle met in her dream, the one who sent her back to our care, is real, and waiting to meet you.