A COVID CHRISTMAS

Trapped in that twilght zone between being asleep and fully awake, I glance at the TV, and on the screen there's two young Black men being interviewed by a reporter. The young men actually look like kids. Smooth flawless skin, sparkling clear eyes, and high pitched voices. Their very presence exuded youth and an unbounded joy that was contagious. Sitting close to each other, and obviously enjoying each other's company, their deep and obvious love for each other possed the power to make the entire room vibrate.

Come to find out, they were actual brothers, born of the same mother and father. 16 and 20 years old, respectively. But there's something else that the interview revealed: They had lost both of their parents to COVID, and one of the brothers--the younger one-- was autistic. The older one talked about how his parents used to tell him that the time would come when he would have to assume responsibility for his brother. To look out for him. To be there. To remember that, come hell or high water, that this was his brother, that they were bonded together, and that he should resist anybody or anything that threatened to burst that bond asunder. The time would come, they told him, when he would have to be his brother's keeper. And, now, that time had come. Undoubtedly faster than he thought. But COVID had made it real, just as real as the death of his parents. His was a COVID Christmas.

There was, for sure, something beautiful and tender about the elder doubling down on a commitment to keep his brother close; indeed, the interview revealed that a lawyer had stepped forward and put in the pro bono work that him the legal guardian of his younger brother. So, a good part of the story, a part hard to miss, was a tale of love and the resilence of the human spirit, even when that spirit resided thin, young, Black bodies. There was something wonderfully magic about the whole affair. It was hard not to experience the joy, especially when these two brothers were beaming at you right through the TV. Maybe, I thought, this was a COVID Christmans that would be at least partially conquered. Out of the tragic and untimely deaths of the parents, it was almost like watching a previously planted seed blossom. But then, all of a sudden something hit me:

Dude's only twenty years old!

How's he going to do this?

He can't even vote.

He's just a few years out of high school.

Dude's only twenty!

In my mind, he was a freakin' kid. Yeah, he had a certain kind of maturity about himself, but come on. He was going to take care of another kid? Great. But who's going to take care of him? There's something unsettling about that kind of weight being perched on the scrawny shoulders of a twenty year old. It's one thing to transition into adulting but it's another thing to be pushed into it.

It hard enough to take care of yourself when you're just a couple of decades out of the womb.But It's hard for me to even imagine what's it like to be twenty and responsible for another human being.

To make sure that he's fed.

That he gets to school.

That he's not bullied

That he makes doctor's appointment.

When you're just twenty, your well of knowledge and experience is pretty shallow. Sure, young folks pull it off if they have a strong support network. But I'm equally convinced that the unrelenting pressure breaks some into pieces.

It's Christmas. They have each other. But they no longer have their parents. While I stand in awe of the tenacious love they have for each other, there's still that one thing that haunts my thoughts:

Dude's only twenty!

THE LONG ARM OF COVID

More broadly, watching that interview caused me to view the current pandemic in a somewhat different light. Thus far, 330,000 Americans have died from COVID, and by the time the curtain closes on this COVID Christmas, that number will undoubtedly have risen somewhere between 350,000-400,000. That number, by the way, is more than five times the number of U.S. troops killed in combat in Vietnam and exceeds the 291,000 Americans struck down in the four years of fighting World War II. Furthermore, Black and Indigenous people are getting down right crushed by COVID. The Indigenous and Black COVID mortality rates are 124 and 133 per one hundred thousand, respectively-- compared to 75.7 for Whites.

These losses are real and stand as the most damaging testimony against triumphalist tales wherein everyone survives. These are folks who will never experience another birthday, never chase, and perhaps catch, another dream; never heartily laugh with friends; never offer advice to a person in search of something greater; never experience the good and bad, the ups and downs of life. To not recognize the weight of this loss, to gloss over it in order to "cheer" people up, to incessantly try to put a nice bow on the funk of life-- all of this fails to properly honor their lives and the ways in which their deaths have may have stomped the joy out of the lives of those who must adjust to their physical absences.

But here's my larger point: The lethal reach of COVID extends far beyond the 330,000 who have their lives snatched. It extends far beyond the numbers of jobs lost. It extends far beyond the deep damage that has been to the economy. Far beyond the number of small businesses that bit the dust.

Thinking more broadly about the impact of COVID means, among other things, traveling beyond the dropped bodies and recogizing, in addition, that part of the cost of the virus entails the grief of those left behind to mourn the loss of loved ones.

BEREAVEMENT MULTIPLIED

All of which brings me back to those two brothers. They are a painful reminder that there is an incacluable but nevertheless real cost associated with this pandemic: The number of individuals who experience the death of a close relative as a result of COVID. These brothers experienced the death of parents. But we also experience COVID related deaths of siblings, grandparents, spouses, and children. It's easy to forget about how this virus delivers a devastating blow to our kinship networks, and how those blows can leave those "left behind" feeling battered. Battered because they were not able to touch their lost kin before the virus snatched their final breath. Battered because they may have had to hold a virtual funeral, forcing some family members to watch the services on their laptops or cell phones. Battered because they were denied-- due to restrictions-- access to the healing power and comfort that can accompany a physical gathering.

A team of sociologists recently estimated that for each COVID death, nine people are impacted by their loss; 9 people, in other words, will find themeslves caught upin the throes of dealing with the death of a close kin-- a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, or a spouse. Just think about that. This means that for 330,000 Americans who have thus far died from COVID, there are 2.9 million persons left to deal with the loss of a close kin.

Given an approprtiate and robust policy response, the economy can rebound. But it likely that we'll be stuck with dealing with grief long after jobs come back, long after unemployment goes down, and long after GDP goes up. This kind of loss can linger and manifest itsself in all sorts of ways. The task ahead of us will be both economic and spiritual. Healing will not only require progressive public policies but also efforts to mitigate the spiritual wounds unleashed by this nation's abysmal and deathly response to the virus. The task ahead is heavy.

And the weight will particularly heavy for those tasked with the responsibility of tending to the human soul.

Catch you on the flip side,

Doc Greene