This last week has been crazy with friends and family being in the hospital. I don’t want to embarrass anyone or call anyone out, I’m just expressing my secondhand feelings towards what happened. I had two cousins in the hospital with serious situations. They’re both probably due to presentations of congenital weaknesses that runs in our family. We’re blood related so what they succumb to, by association also threatens me. It’s doubly scary. I have lost many people that I care about already, so I know the stakes. They both pulled through. I am so grateful for both the healing hand of God and modern medicine helping to keep them whole and safe. I also know it’s not permanent. Their lives will be at risk again and someday, they may not come back.

Last week wasn’t done though, both an uncle and my friend’s sibling were stricken with intense cases of Covid-19. My uncle is in his sixties, but has always been super mindful of his diet and exercise. It didn’t prevent him from catching the virus or it’s most serious symptoms. At the hospital, they hooked him up to oxygen and pumped him full of every kind of medicine. He is now off oxygen, and has been released to a care facility for a couple weeks and after that, home where nurses can visit him. Again, I am grateful for the hand of God and modern medicine and whatever sturdiness clean eating and exercise brought to the table.

My poor friend, though, was not so blessed. This week she traveled so family could be there when the doctors took her sibling off life support. She prayed, we all prayed. The doctors and nurse did all they could, yet they were not healed.

I have things that threaten my health. Some are genetic and cannot be altered, but some like Covid-19 are environmental and there are vaccines and protocols that can help me not catch it, or lessening the symptoms and worst outcomes of the illness. So do the rest of you. I cannot comprehend all of the psychological and political reasons why people are refusing to get vaccinated or wear masks. Every single scientific measurement of outcomes is far favor of vaccines and masks over unvaccinated and unmasked. By a 1000%, literally.

I know firsthand that death is a permanent loss. Once you are gone there’s no way of bringing you back. Sure you might be excited to see the afterlife, but there are people here and now that love you and who are depending on you, and who don’t want to lose you.

My father died during November. Every November since I remember losing him again. As I look at the bare branches of trees and feel the cold, damp air, the whole Pacific Northwest becomes the graveyard of my grief. I dream of him sometimes, but then I remember he is gone and the dream melts away. He has missed my wedding, and my children and retirement with my mother. I couldn’t save him, but maybe you’ll read this and save yourself.