A Person… A Minute… A Serious Set of Seconds

It’s been a year since the COVID-19 shut down began and we’ve lost about a person a minute during that time. I know of a hospital that will hold a Memorial service this week, honoring those who died within their patient rooms and ICUs and conference rooms (once the ICUs got full) and hallways (once the conference rooms were full). They’re also going to be remembering the rest of the 500,000 from throughout the country.

I’ve heard about how hospitals are being paid to claim that deaths are COVID-related. As if this is a conspiracy, something fake, but then you have to explain the host of people showing up who can’t breathe. If the numbers were small or regular and hospitals were making claims, that would be one thing. But, who was telling these people to go to the hospital?  Why were they showing up there? Come on…

You may not be around some place that’s holding a Memorial this week. But, you are near people who have been fighting a battle every day. In this year of interdependence, when we had our need for each other, the fragility of our networking, put into our faces daily, we have all been around or close to people who have been fighting to crush this virus.

At some point this week, have your own Memorial. Light a candle and pray. Just get silent. Take a serious set of seconds to make yourself admit it has been a year of interdependence, and in the quiet of your heart, allow yourself to trust this hasn’t been pretend… for the sake of the 500,000 people whose cousins, neighbors, wives, husbands, friends, aunts and uncles, schoolmates, teachers, bus drivers, children, priests or pastors, employees and employers, the people who served them coffee or took them into shelters or who nursed them… you have met or passed or know.

Interdependence… we’re all connected.