We’ve Become Too Accepting of Death

by imageguy

Today is a day of great sadness in America, having topped the milestone of half a million people now having succumbed to the Covid virus. We sit silently in awe of the number, and yet it has passed by us almost like the weather or the stock market. So many of us who have been fortunate enough to avoid this deadly bug have gone about our lives fearful and guarded and separated. It is a lonely way to live. But we have survived. And millions more have been touched deeply by loss of someone close, who did not need to die this year. Can you imagine if we had been drawn into a new war somewhere in the world and had lost half a million soldiers in only a year. I believe the country I grew up in would have taken to the streets in mass all over the nation to stop such a horror. Yet somehow, because so many of these lives disappeared behind hospital walls and in nursing homes, because these people were old, or vulnerable, or had no celebrity, because they died mostly alone except for a nurse, or a cell phone, they have been quietly drifting by us, ghost like, touching that spot in us that feels so helpless.

Some continue to complain because they are asked to simply protect themselves and at least not endanger others. Yet, in the new American arrogance of the individual who feels they have to stand up and scream like a five-year-old, “you’re not the boss of me”, such childish selfishness should have been erased by the time they were adolescents. Until parents teach their children that they have responsibilities as human beings in a community, the defiance of immature individuals will interfere with the well-being and security of all Americans. We have spent four years learning to distrust, distracted by ridiculous drama on the grandest scale, while half a million American citizens of all families and communities passed from our lives and we are all the poorer for it.

Please wear your mask and get vaccinated. Be safe.

Imageguy