When It Comes to Those We've Lost: Attention Must Be Paid

“…he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to [just] fall into his grave…. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person.” --"Death of a Salesman”, Arthur Miller

4,840 and 78,763 and 278,703.

Numbers. Statistics on a page.  A tally, a count, an amount. Not much to be moved by here or shocked by here or saddened by here until you realize that these are the number of deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

And so as of today, as I write this piece, 4,840 people have died in Massachusetts and 78,763 people have died in the United States and 278,703 people have died worldwide. When you realize this, when you look again at those numbers, if you pick up a copy of the biggest newspaper in the state, like I did this weekend, and look through 21 pages of death notices, then you know.

Know and remember that behind everyone of those numbers is a name and a face and a life.  Grandmothers and grandfathers, and neighbors and friends, and mothers and fathers, and the famous and the anonymous. Lives lived. Lives lost.

It’s not like I just woke up this morning and suddenly realized that so many people have been taken by the virus. Like most folks, I keep up with the latest news and I check in on breaking developments daily, and so a part of me has been aware of the truth that too many, that so many people have succumbed to COVID-19.  No one in my intimate circle of friends and family have died but just this week I did learn that two good friends had lost their fathers in the week just passed. I read it on Facebook. I wrote them my condolences.  And then went on scrolling through my news feed.

I’m not quite sure why the death toll hasn’t been more on my mind and heart, or been more on the minds and hearts of most Americans. As I consume news, I have begun to notice that the story of deaths is most often relegated to the end of the news cycle or news program or news digest, after so many other COVID-19 stories. The race to find an effective treatment and vaccine.  The economic toll the shut down had wrought on millions of people and businesses.  The latest wacky cures offered by some in government who seem more worried about news polls than death tolls. The protests, albeit very small, by folks on the edge of public opinion, who wave their flags and eschew masks and carry their guns and see stay at home orders as a grave threat to civil liberties.  Now that’s a “sexy” story that guaranteed to take the lead on the front page.  THIS JUST IN!          

But go deeper in the news and the stories of death are heartbreaking, very often telling the story of a senior citizen, someone in their seventies or eighties or nineties, who lived a really good life, who loved and created a clan and served their country and then died: in a nursing home or an assisted living facility or at home. 

The obituary doesn’t say it but the truth is that many were vulnerable, from a health perspective, to begin with, and so the cruelness of COVID-19 reveals itself. It most often takes the weak and the compromised and the vulnerable and not just the old but low income folks too. Folks who live in places with high levels of air pollution and low levels of access to quality and affordable health care: places like Brockton and Chelsea and Lawrence and Lynn. And people who can’t afford not to work: consider the three grocery store clerks who have died in our state. 

Maybe all those truths explain why as a society we have yet to rise up in collective grief and mourning.  No statewide moment of silence.  No ringing of church bells. No memorial service featuring government officials and the pomp and pageantry of so many people eulogized and remembered. 

Just page after page after page after page of death notices with haunting photographs of the deceased: some very recent images, some photos of life long ago. Black and white pictures of women and men, wearing a World War II uniform or standing at the altar on their wedding day.  They all come alive somehow for one last moment, and as your read those notices, you see the intimate and beautiful details of lives lived well. Beloved father. Decorated veteran.  Devoted wife. Loving great-grandmother.

So yes, attention must be paid to the dead, to those we have lost and will lose, to COVID-19.  God knows these lives matter.  These people made this world better and brighter and so we cannot let them be forgotten in the intensity and confusion of this moment in history. We have commended them to God. 

But so too, let us remember them, each one of these children of God.  Remember and honor their lives and legacies, all that they were. How much they will be missed.     

Attention must be paid.