The Irreparable Loss

Today there are 2,181,508 confirmed cases of the coronavirus worldwide; 147,337 have died; 554,899 have recovered.  Here in the U.S. we have 671,493 confirmed cases; 33,288 deaths, and 56,236 recovered.  China has revised the Wuhan death toll upward by 50%.  This is a pandemic the likes of which we have never experienced before.  Hopeful signs exist as the so-called “spread” or “curve” has leveled out in some areas, but the virus is still in charge and still causing irreparable loss for families around the globe.  The virus is still in charge and has decimated the world’s economy.  

Is it irreparable?  For the families who have lost loved ones it is irreparable and I wonder every morning if we (all of us, everywhere) really feel their loss (for it is our loss, as well).  I think it is very important that we “feel” and “take-in” the sorrow.  I am not being morbid—I am trying to be human.  I am not being a voice of despair—I am trying to be realistic.  Do we “feel?”  “Where is your brother?  Where is your sister? These are not ancient questions reserved only  of Cain.  They are questions being asked of us in this time.

Everybody is all worked up about the economy.  Everyone is eager for normalcy to return. All of us complain and protest against the “stay-at-home” guidelines.  “Let’s go back,” we shout,  “to the way it was.”  It never will be what it was “once upon a time” for those who grieve the lives of those taken by Covid-19.  Tennyson’s poem, “Break, Break, Break” says it in a way that I cannot.

“Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And  I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman’s boy

That he shouts with his sister at play!

O well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill:

But O for the touch a vanish’d hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!”

And then Tennyson pours out a flood of feeling and speaks for those who have suffered irreparable loss with the lines:

“But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me.”

Let not cold statistics rule our minds and hearts and cause them to become numb, without feeling, without care.  Let not our selfish and arrogant desire for normalcy allow us to ignore those who have experienced irreparable loss.  Let us do everything we can, from washing our hands, staying home, and wearing a mask when we go out,  to help prevent any more irreparable losses for our brothers and sisters around the world.