Rituals

The beloved grandson's second birthday is later this month.  The birthday plan is an outdoor party (with masks) at Pier 6.  This isn't an amusement park; it's repurposed land along the East River in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge.  The old abandoned piers have become a green ribbon of a park on the shores of the East River transformed with picnic tables, playgrounds, volleyball courts, basketball courts, gardens, restaurants, and walking paths.  Any two year old's birthday party isn't breaking social news except in pandemic times.  Drake and I have been so blessed to be here in a 'family pod' since March able to celebrate these events. 

Over the past eight months most of us have NOT celebrated Mother's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, July 4th, Labor Day and the start of school.  We've put weddings, graduations, memorials, and funerals on hold or simply cancelled them.   Women have delivered babies surrounded by no loved ones except their husband/significant other if they were lucky.  Visiting a hospital room or a sick friend is like trying to accompany someone to an airplane gate.  We've given up restaurant visits, shopping at the mall, nightclubs, amusement parks, bars, and house parties not to mention hair cuts.     

If this psychological pain isn't enough, many of us have been suffering months of physical pain because of so many elective surgeries being cancelled.  If it's your knee or hip that needs to be replaced, it doesn't feel very elective.  In the peak of the virus this past spring, I've wondered where did all the heart attack victims and stroke victims receive care?  How did the cancer patients fare?  And, it was certainly a bad time to have an accident and need an emergency room.  Currently, there are no hospitals under duress, but revisiting the trauma of stressed and swamped hospital services seems to be looming on the horizon as more and more states have zooming COVID infection rates.

This pandemic has been like the famed Chinese water torture described in the 16th century as victims being driven insane with drops of water dripping onto the forehead for long periods of time.  Losing so many rituals of society one after another with no real end in sight coupled with the real fear of dying does seem like that type of torture.

Currently, there's COVID fatigue.  Yeah, I get that.  To make a comparison, if you're in the classroom, you can only expect about seven minutes of avid attention any time the teacher is talking.  Well, lots of people we trust a lot less than teachers have been talking for a lot longer than seven minutes about COVID.  

So, let's reframe the discussion using irrefutable facts to reset our perspective about this damn pandemic using a comparison of COVID deaths to USA deaths in wars/spanish flu pandemic:

Number of Deaths

Civil War:  618,000 out of 31 million people (.02% of the population)

WWI: 116,000 out of 103 million people  (about .001% of the population)

Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918:  675,000 out of 103 million people (an additional .006% of the population) 

[total: .007% of the population WWI & Spanish Flu Pandemic combined]

WWII:  407,000 - (.003% of the population) 

Korean War:  33,000 - (.0002% of the population) 

Vietnam War:  51,000 - (0002% of the population)

Afghan/Iraq Wars:  8,000 - negligible

COVID:  219,000:  (.0006 of the population)

From this perspective, COVID has already killed a bigger percentage of the population than the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Afghan/Iraq Wars combined.  And COVID is not finished killing us.  

These death numbers in relationship to the population makes our feelings of stress and fatigue more understandable.  Grieving the loss of our rituals, and then the crapshoot of who just barely gets sick and who dies from COVID does make this pandemic more like a war situation.  Loved ones who have sent a son or daughter off to a war miss them desperately at ritual events and suffer every day wondering if they will be wounded or killed.  Sure sounds familiar to what's happening today, doesn't it?

How have we gotten through wars in the past?  By pulling together.  By being mindful we are all experiencing the same stressors.  I've talked at length to my parents and in-laws and their friends about World War II.  Yes, USA history nerd here. The basic overview:  Everyone understood they were personally responsible for doing whatever it took to win the war.  Whatever sacrifice.  Whatever inconvenience.  Whatever.  The war management wasn't perfect.  Everyone knew we were losing the key battles initially.  Instead of backbiting, anger, and division, every understood what winning World War II was going to take.  Rethink your COVID fatigue and stress in those terms, and let's follow JFK's famous quote:  "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."   We need all of us to rise to the fight.