Reflections:
Last week the number of deaths from Covid-19 surpassed 200,000. Experts predict that this number could double by the end of the year. Had we known these numbers in the spring we would have been staggered. But now, more than six months into the Coronivirus pandemic, we have become numb. Most of us read the reports as statistics, a way of keeping score. Some have even concluded that the number of deaths is “acceptable,” a relatively small percentage of our population, even though it is equivalent to 1,000 airline crashes with 200 fatalities each in the span of 7 months. But for those 200,000 families and their friends, it is personal. Each has a story. Each feels the loss.
Last week a young couple from Minnesota with their three small children spent four days in our home in Colorado so they could visit his mother who lives nearby and is dying of cancer. Knowing her cancer is terminal, she has chosen not to pursue additional treatment. Instead, she has been assigned to hospice care in her home. They stayed with us so they could give her space while spending the best parts of the day loving and caring for her. They comforted one another while facing death with courage and confidence, the children and grandchildren gathering around her in her final days.
Whether it is Covid, cancer, or some other means, death will come to us all. We try to avoid it, try to not think about it. But it comes to everyone, to the obscure and the famous, the rich and the poor, all nations, all races and all cultures. Every generation must learn how to deal with death.
Psalm 90 recorded this prayer from Moses: “You turn men back into dust and say, ‘Return O children of men.’ For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night. You have swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep; in the morning they are like grass that sprouts anew. In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew; toward evening it fades and withers away. … We have finished our years like a sigh. … So teach us to number our days that