I read a Facebook post this morning intended to bring perspective on the Covid virus to people who “just want to get back to normal”.
It was an emotional piece about a wife being awakened in the middle of the night by her husband who is gasping for air and then leaves to take him to the hospital as their young children watch in horror and fear; and where the relatively young father and husband ultimately succumbs to the disease.
A truly tragic and heart wrenching scenario. I’d like to offer some additional perspective:
When I was 24, and my father was 48, as the celebration of my younger sister’s 10th birthday was winding down and while my older sister and her husband were preparing to announce to my parents that they were expecting their first grandchild, my father suffered a massive, fatal heart attack in front of my mother and 4 of their 7 children, including the newly 10 year old and my youngest brother who was 8 at the time.
As traumatic an experience as the Covid scenario at least.
Three months later, and the day after I got engaged, I returned home to find my mother consoling my aunt whose 27 year old daughter had just succumbed to her 10 year battle with leukemia.
Less than two months later, while still reeling from the two recent tragic losses, I arrived at my then fiancé’s house after work where he sat me down to tell me that my sister had just phoned to tell him that my best friend had been brutally murdered.
There have been of course many more losses over the years.
This past year, since Covid began, I lost a very close friend to cancer and an aunt to frail health.
Another wonderful friend passed and I didn’t learn about it until he had already been buried; a lifelong, devout Catholic, with no funeral. 
My good friend lost her beautiful mother and my daughter in law lost her beloved father, both to cancer, and another beautiful relative lost her elderly mom to Alzheimer’s disease.
My brother in law spent a terrifying week in ICU fighting pneumonia while the doctors were mistakenly treating him for Covid. Praise God he is recovering.
Right now, a good friend is nursing her son back to health after a terrible car accident.
Another friend’s son is fighting for his life after a tragic work accident.
And another friend is holding desperately to life, on a ventilator in a battle against Covid while his wife and children and friends suffer in the fear of the story I began this post with.
ALL of this is real.
ALL of this is life.
ALL of this is perspective.
The reason we suffer, is because life and love are worth the risks.
Tragedies come. They come from so many places and in so many ways.
Everyone’s loss and journey matters.
We need to “get back to normal”.
Normal is where we tend to one another.
Where we grieve together and comfort one another and share our fears;
But also our LIVES. And our hopes.
Death is a fact of life.
Living in fear of it doesn’t stop it from coming.
It just starts the process sooner and accelerates it faster.
It kills us while we’re still alive.
Life is short enough.
Don’t be so consumed by the fear and the sorrow, that you forget or refuse to live the joy.
Some things are worth the risk of dying for.
Living is one of them.
Anne On The Issues 