Collateral Damage

The memes were funny, at first.

There were no mushroom clouds, no pictures of gaunt Jews pressed against chain link fences, no live images of burning towers on the Southern tip of Manhattan, of thousands of regular folks trying to outrun the two million tons of concrete, metal, and human remains. Rubble, they call it. 

It has occurred to me that even after a cushion of decades, nobody laughs about 9/11, or the Holocaust, or about bombs vaporizing entire cities in Japan. More than a half century later, I made a tasteless pun while walking down a street in Hiroshima. My son was appalled, and I was appropriately chastised. This was before I went into the museum, before I saw the bench that had survived, along with the dim shadow of the person who had just been sitting there. Still, there was no excuse. 

We cannot see a virus, and those of us who are not medical professionals in hot spot emergency rooms cannot really imagine what it looks like, death on a ventilator, just days after a toilet paper shortage may have been somebody's biggest concern. 

The memes have kept us laughing, while we wonder when -- or if --- we will return to our favorite bars or restaurants, or go to a gym, or have a reason to shower before late in the afternoon. As horrific as the pandemic is, most of us will likely not know somebody who dies. 100,000 people is a lot of people, but in a country of 330 million, a world of billions, our odds are pretty good. And there's no volcano of human remains to remind us, in the starkest of terms, of the tragedy. 

The economic pain is a reality check, but the toll goes much deeper. What of all the people who die alone, now, whether of the virus or old age or some other "normal" disease? What of the ones who are left behind, haunted by the notion that they couldn't be there, to squeeze a hand, to whisper I love you. What of our elderly parents, holed up alone, wondering when we will allow them to see us again.

When my father died, 22 years ago, I had just arrived back in Chicago, not really believing that when I said goodbye to him that morning in Brooklyn, I would never see him again. He waited for me to call. I know he did; he wasn't about to let go until he knew I was home, safe. I called, and he began to die, with my mother there, holding his hand, and placing the phone to his ear so I could tell him I love him.  

The covid 19 memes were funny at first. I admit, some of them continue to make me laugh. But most of us will not escape the rubble.