COVID-19 Deaths Month 7: September

 

The college students have been mostly good in our town since the first weekend. There were parties. But the schools cracked down quickly and threatened to send them home. It is oddly eerie for the neighborhood to be so quiet, so much so that the autumn equinox snuck up on us. How is it fall already? We have been in some phase of lockdown for six months now. 

I celebrated by finally risking a haircut, with all the proper precautions in place. There were only four of us in the entire salon. My house has ordered food in a few times but we are sure to tip very well. We’ve stopped wiping down our groceries when we get home as it was found to be unnecessary. The science around the virus keeps evolving. We are learning more about it.

The basic news still applies. Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Six feet apart. Isolate.

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.

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 September, we lost twenty-two thousand one-hundred and eighty-six Americans.

22,186

That's near the total population of the city of Garden City, NY in 2010.

Since the rise of the pandemic 228,823 Americans have died of it.

 

Over 200,000 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

 

[I carry your heart with me (I carry it in)]

 

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

                                                i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

 

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

 

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

 

~e.e. cummings