Weeks into COVID-19 and the death toll continues to rise.  I honestly don’t know what the real numbers are, but the scientists and politicians will sort out something in time. But what the numbers don’t tell are the stories of each tic mark in the tally.  Each mother or father, brother or sister is a story.  These stories get lost in the charts, whether we flatten the curve or not.  

A doctor jumped on a call to do a radio story I heard recently.  She attempted to help the uneducated make sense of what’s going on medically while personalizing its effects; her father is a COVID-19 patient.  She explained how the disease works with the emotional distance of a practiced physician, while straining to understand why it was all happening with the practice of a daughter caring for her father.  Minutes into her explanations she paused (my paraphrase):  ‘The worst part of this whole thing is that people are dying alone.  No one to comfort them. No one to hold their hand.  Wives and brothers standing outside, longing to hold their loved ones, husbands and sisters dying inside, longing to be held both separated by hazmat suits and social distancing.’  

Another story told of a surviving spouse.  Her husband died of COVID-19 early in the outbreak, before anybody had any real sense of what this thing looked like.  He died and as the coroner took him out of their home in a special body bag, they shut the door behind them, telling her that she was not allowed to leave the house for some number of lonely days; she had been exposed and must be quarantined to mourn alone.  No funeral to plan.  No shiva to sit.

This is not how it’s supposed to be.  We aren’t supposed to die through the very contact that makes us human.  We aren’t meant to be alone, in sickness or in health, which is why we put those words in our sacred commitments.  

This is not how it’s supposed to be.  Things haven’t been right since Eden.  Yet here we are.  Do we chalk this up to the cost of sin?  Do we attribute this to punishment?  

The idea of spending a lifetime loving someone, holding them when they’re sick and loving them when they’re unlovable seems intimidating, which is why we celebrate wedding anniversaries with panache.  And to separate at the end, at the time that our loved ones are needed most seems most unfair.  Oh, how lonely that must be!

What do we do? How do we respond?

I honestly don’t know. So I hope. 

I hope this doesn't happen to me. Or my spouse.

I hope that, despite any separation, I’ll sing to her until the end.

I hope that those left to live find a community to hold.

I hope that those left to live find healing they’ve never known. 

I hope that those dying alone meet the Maker with a hug.

‘Hope’ here is built on assurance of faith, not wishes.  Wishes are what children mumble as they blow out birthday candles.  Hope in faith is what old women mumble was they watch a spouse sing through the plate glass of the nursing home window.  Hope in faith is what old men mumble as they prepare to meet the maker:  “it’s just crazy that he loves me.”

That’s the faith I put my hope in.