COVID-19 Deaths Month 3: May

The virus is taking lives across all continents. At the end of this month we passed 100,000 dead Americans. I now believe we will need to sequester ourselves through the summer. I continue to pray that it does not get worse. In New York we entered Phase One of reopening, but it’s still tightly controlled. Those who can open have strict protocols they must follow. Still no gatherings.

None of our stores are open 24 hours anymore as they need the night to deep clean before they open again. Some stores have special senior hours in the morning so that they don’t have to worry about crowds.

There are talks of reopening more if the numbers stay good, at the same time that there are news and media reports of customers shooting people and getting angry and spitting on retail employees because they’re being asked to wear a mask. A lot of my friends work the kind of jobs that require them to be in public and interact with people. I am hearing stories. worry for them. 

We need to cultivate patience and compassion. They will help us help each other get through this.

I check the total dead each day. I have a list of numbers. Every night at midnight I light my ancestor altar. I call on those who weathered plagues and mysterious illnesses that swept through villages and cities. I call on my foremothers and fathers who lost loved ones, and those who lost their own lives in such times. I ask them to guide the dead. I ask them to watch over the living. I ask them to wrap the world in some measure of peace.

And I chant the number of souls who died that day. I chant it seven times. I wish them ease. I wish them peace. I sometimes cry for their families, for the ones who died alone. Especially for the ones who died alone. Viruses don't care about human need. I try to remember that.

It's a simple ritual. It keeps me mindful of what is happening outside of my own isolation.

 

In May, we lost forty-five thousand nine-hundred and thirty-eight Americans.

45,938

That's near the total population of Freeport, NY in 2010.

Since the rise of the pandemic 104,025 Americans have died of it.

 

Over 100,000 Americans have died of covid-19.

  

Light a candle. Say a prayer. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Stay six feet apart. If you think you are ill isolate yourself for 72 hours. If you think you have been exposed quarantine yourself for 14 days before exposing anyone else to you. Video chat with your loved ones. We can do this. May we all come out the other side.

 

[Statistics gathered from this W.H.O. website. They have changed as the numbers have come in, so there is some wiggle room around the exact number.]

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A Contemplative Poem for the Month

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk

down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs

to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”

when someone sneezes, a leftover

from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons

from your grocery bag, someone else will help you

pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,

and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile

at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress

to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far

from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these

fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,

have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

 

~Danusha Laméris