Thinking in Peaces

 My husband is a Boy Scout to the bone. Prepared. Ready for the worst case scenario - whether filling a suitcase for a whirlwind vacation, packing up gear to go camping, stocking a portable tool box for mountainside deck-building, or getting through the average day during a global pandemic.  Here he was in the mid-2020s - pre-vaccination, pre-KN95 mask saturation, smack dab in the middle of WTF-ery.  You can't see it, but there's a HEPA filter over the end of the tube of that full face, underwater snorkel mask. #PreparedMan. And yes - he wore that standout virus resister everywhere that wasn't here inside our super-sanitized, hyper-bubble-only home.  It worked. He did all the family errand-running in his "scoober" (as our eloquent granddaughter called it). I did curbside pick-ups, Door Dash ordering, and backyard distance-seated happy hour planning. We stayed well. When volunteers were requested for a Texas antibody study, we signed up for 3 blood draws. Last draw...

It's been a week of realizing our grief, hasn't it? Recounting the days before and after. Telling the stories that begin, "Last year at this time." We do this when we lose people we love. I call them the Walking-Through-Jello days of grieving that include the phrases, "Last week at this time..." and "Last month I was..." and "Remember their birthday last year?" These days are followed by the still-grieving conversations that gather around the words, "A year ago we..."  Many - so, so many - have lost people they love to COVID-19 over the last 12 months. 526,815 families in the United States have buried at least one person who was not supposed to be taken away by a virus. That's an average of 1,443 deaths a day for 365 days.  2.6 million families across the globe have done the same.  45,837 families here in my home state of Texas have said unexpected goodbyes - 124 of them today.  The rest of us have simply lost days and month...