TW: Parental Loss

I've been thinking a lot about Covid deniers and anti-maskers. Over 600,000 people have died from Covid. Many more died indirectly from Covid. Others have or will die after "recovering" from Covid because of lung damage or blood clots or other reasons.

And for every person that dies, there are tons of people left truly shattered by the loss of that person. Like, gutted beyond belief. People whose lives will never be the same. People whose lives could have been different if we had just been compassionate to one another and saved

more of those lives. People who didn't get to see those people that they loved before they died because they were trying to keep them safe. People who didn't get one last birthday, one last Christmas, one last hug. And some of those people died alone in a hospital bed because

they were trying to keep people safe. In January and February of this year, a person died of Covid every 6 minutes. The other day I read that something like 1 in 568 Americans have died of Covid. And this is just in the U.S.

Everything that Trump did, that Fox "news" has done, that Covid deniers and anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers have dones has made this worse. For everyone. For those who have died of Covid and those who have died from other things.

Our country is overflowing with grief and trauma and loss and there are people standing outside of middle schools harassing kids for wearing a mask. And what they don't realize is that some of those kids are grieving horrific losses deep in their bones.

On Saturday, I should be picking my Dad up at the airport so he can watch his first born grand child go to prom and then in a week, graduate from high school. Instead, I held her this morning as she cried and there was nothing I could say or do to make this okay because it is not

We were with my Dad when the pandemic began in March 2020. We sat in a restaurant one last time with him as we talked about what it meant and wondered what was happening. Then we got on an airplane and flew home. And we prayed. We prayed so hard that

our family would be safe. And at first, everyone was good. People put teddy bears and rainbows in windows. We applauded teachers and healthcare workers. And we thought, we got this. And then everything went awful. People became selfish and

I couldn't explain it to my children. And we were diligent. We spent a summer isolated, just the four of us. We talk on the phone. We facetimed. We tried to keep everyone, the people we loved and the people we didn't even know safe. Because it was the

compassionate thing to do. And as 2020 came to an end we thought maybe we had made it. Then on Christmas Eve we got the call that someone we love had gone to bed sick. And on new year's eve, I learned that my Dad had tested positive.

He was 1 in 13 members of my family to test positive. And for 3 solid months he fought Covid. There were days where we thought he wasn't going to make it. But then, miraculously, he did. But he was still on oxygen for a long time. And then he was buying tickets and we were

talking about what he was going to wear to graduation. One night he was teasing me about wearing a t-shirt and jeans to graduation and the next day I'm getting a phone call that he was in an accident. And I thought, this can't be right.

He fucking survived cancer and Covid. This just can't be right. And he fought for a week. But his lungs, ravaged, could not take everything that came next. So my Dad did not die directly from Covid. But Covid and the actions surrounding this past year

affected everything about my Dad's last year of life and his death. He was a good man. So loved. And everything about his last year on this Earth was affected by Covid. Which is true for all of us. Whether we get Covid or not, this

past year affects us. And we could have worked together to make this better for each of us. But we didn't. Portions of us were greedy and selfish and callous and people died alone. People died far too soon. Now more than 40,000 kids have lost one or both parents. Many adults have

lost their parents far too soon. And even as an adult, losing a parent is the worst fucking thing. I don't know how to be a girl in this world without her father. And I don't want to know. I just want my daddy. I want my daddy to see my daughter

go to prom and graduate high school. I want him to give her one of his amazing bear hugs and tell her how proud he is of her. Instead we grieve. We grieve after spending a year in isolation because some power greedy fuckers wanted to pretend

this wasn't happening and they lied to you over and over and over again on a television screen and you believed them. You believed them instead of believing the 100s of dedicated scientists who had dedicated their lives to trying to save lives. You believed the people who tried

overthrow our Capitol and assassinate our vice president and senators and you spit on the graves of every single one of those more than 500,000 Americans who died when all you had to do was wear a mask, get drive through, and be kind to your fellow human beings. And now we are a

nation overrun with mourners and loss and grief. If you have not personally been affected by the events of this last year than you do not understand the depths of the trauma that those who were have been. And you are lucky.

If the worse thing that happened to you is you broke down and ate bread or you had to buy a swimming pool because your kids were really bored, you are lucky. Because for many of us, we will never recover from the losses of this past year. The loss of

income. The loss of those last moments with loved ones. The loss of those loved ones. And if you in any way contributed to those losses for someone else, I hope that you have a momet of personal reckoning and your soul is troubled to know that you had a chance to make a horrific

situation better for someone and you did not. When you look at those loss numbers, which are now estimated to be over 900,000 know that those numbers don't at all account for the true toll of this past year. Each of those 900,000 people leave behind so many more people who

grieve them in the depths of their soul. And the world will never be the same. Ever.