500,000

25 February 2021

This week, the United States passed the terrible milestone of 500,000 known coronavirus-related deaths.  More Americans have died from Covid-19 than were killed in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. About a third of those deaths were people in long-term care facilities. And for many reasons related to racial and economic injustice, the virus disproportionately killed people of color at twice or more the rate of white Americans. While we seem to be turning a corner due to masking, social distancing, and vaccines, we don’t know yet what role the virus variants will play.

How do we grieve for 500,000 people—all those lives cut short, all those families and friends hurting? How do we grieve for lost opportunities for ourselves and others?  How do we carry the multiple burdens of this year—racial injustice, economic losses, climate catastrophes such as fires and storms, and much more?

This is a hard thing to write and read about during 8th week when everything already feels heavy.  But it is important that we don’t turn away from the scale of our losses. Instead, we must recognize the effects on each one of us, reach out if we need help, support each other, and work to make the world a better place for all. The memory of our lost loved ones can the blessing that carries us forward in these efforts. 

On Monday night, President Biden said “This nation will smile again. This nation will know sunny days again. This nation will know joy again. And as we do, we’ll remember each person we lost, the lives they lived and the loved ones they’ve left behind.”

In her poem “Ailey, Baldwin, Floyd, Killens, and Mayfield” (often called “When Great Trees Fall”), Maya Angelou writes:

They existed.  They existed.
We can be. Be and be better.  
For they existed.

Be and be better, for they existed,
Carolyn Fure-Slocum, College Chaplain