A Tragic Blur

A Blur of Green – Photo: L. Weikel

It’s becoming a tragic blur. Every day we’re hearing about more and more people losing their lives to the Coronavirus pandemic that’s exploding in our country. I’m sure this is just the tip of the iceberg, and two weeks from now (April 10^th– it’s a date) we’ll wish we were only experiencing the rate of positive tests and deaths we’re reporting and lamenting today. Today’s anguish will seem ‘aspirational’ to our future selves.

If you stay off social media and refuse to turn on your tv or radio, it’s easy to both be a responsible citizen, practicing social distancing and remaining in the orbit of your home, and lose complete track of the insanity unfolding in hospitals all over the country, but especially in New York City. The nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and emergency personnel of all stripes who are operating in overdrive, attempting to meet the tidal wave of need that’s overcoming our cities, are operating within that tragic blur. All they see are people in fear and distress, unable to breathe, desperate for care and compassion.

No filter – Photo: L. Weikel

Guilt of Relative Ease

And here I am, ostensibly doing my best to ‘flatten the curve’ and keep our local hospitals from suffering the same fate as New York’s and becoming inundated with new Covid-19 patients. My sacrifice – if you can even call it that, which I for one honestly cannot in good conscience do – is to refrain from going anywhere other than the grocery store or the pharmacy (to neither of which places I’ve gone in a week). Hardly a sacrifice.

No, I can’t sit in the same room with my son and daughter-in-law, or give them a hug when they appear at our door bearing gifts of pizza and pierogies. But they’re not sick and neither are we. And I want it to stay that way. If not touching or sitting in the same room as them for a couple of weeks or months will do the trick? I’m all for it.

Compared to the horrors of the hospitals? There is none.

Treasure the Little Things

So in honor of those who are in the trenches, in honor of the people who are working slavishly day in and day out trying to save as many lives as possible without having the right equipment or survival mechanisms at their disposal, I try to treasure the little things.

In honor of those who are tragically losing their lives every day, I am trying to appreciate the beauty that surrounds this place where I am forced to stay for not only my own good, but the good of my family, community, county, and state.

What do I see when I pay exquisite attention?

Beauty. Innocence. Magnificence. Agelessness.

And that quality I always seem to come back to no matter how hard I try to focus my attention elsewhere: love.