It’s on everyone’s mind every second of the day. Who will be next in announcing they have it. Who will be next news, learning that someone has died.
All day long I’m reading these announcements and I hold my breath and brace myself to be strong and cheerful and supporting and sorry. Fill in the blank. Often I’m silent because I just ran out of words. It’s so real to me because it is real. My mind does not allow any fiction to interfere with the facts of this cold, mind numbing reality. My guess is that during the middle ages the plague wasn’t so sanitized, so odorless. Just the same my freakish mind amplifies the fact that death surrounds us with a vengeance. There is a silent unraveling taking place among us. We are quietly becoming unhinged.
Two days ago a friend of many years called, and as we chatted, I realized he was totally incoherent. He talked and talked and made no sense. Still he continued on and on while I listened, wondering what was going on. Finally, se said: “My cousin, the one with Covid, died”. If words can be a mantle of peace I did my very best to comfort him. My poor friend unraveled down to his core before he could bring himself to whisper that his cousin, his friend, had died. He then said he would find that phone number he wanted me to have and said his goodbye. He broke my heart, knowing that his was in shambles.
We patiently wait and wait some more to see if we, each one of us, will live or die from this usurper, the pandemic. This is what Russian Roulette must feel like, that one bullet gun clicking against our heads. Yes, we are unraveling. Best we hide it for now.
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