Losses and gains amid the current storm
Iheard the refrain last year, “Do you know anyone who has gotten it?” meaning the COVID-19 virus that has now taken the lives of 400,000 Americans.
I work in health care and early in the catastrophe, I knew of people who were “getting it” and some who got it died, while others recovered.
Still, I hear people who insist the death toll is exaggerated even though longevity is dropping in America. The number of dead approaches the number of Americans killed during the four years of America’s fight in World War II.
The past year, and I am counting from the point when some information about the virus began to surface, it just feels like more people I know — and more people who know the people I know — are dying. This is anecdotal, but people you know are not statistics. They are friends and family.
About a year later, people I know have a relative, or multiple relatives, who succumbed to the virus. The death tolls and infection rates from our nation’s nursing homes is beyond sad. It is shocking.
The most sensible, and the least easily fooled people, in our divided country are reasonable in placing hope for a restoration of some degree of normality in the vaccines. A greater availability and rate of vaccination cannot some soon enough. It won’t fix everything, but it will help greatly.
Personal losses continue, however. Some deaths caused by the virus and others not, but saddening all the same.
Over the weekend, “Zoom” memorial services were conducted for Robert Hall, an 82-yearold Air Force veteran and Coffee4Vets regular. In the past year, he sought assistance with veteran benefits, sharing that he had been rebuffed because he wasn’t considered qualified.
Of course, he was misinformed. He was an Air Force veteran who served in South Korea. He was, in fact, qualified, but did not live long enough to access benefits of service that he rightfully earned. Hall’s chief quality at the veteran breakfasts was a courteous and kindly manner.
Another loss in the “great American” category this past weekend was Patricia Faux. Patricia, an energetic 70-something of long FAA experience, suffered a series of strokes last year. One of the tragedies of aphasia is that the afflicted has their intellect, but loses the ability to speak. She was one of the brightest and articulate people to anyone who knew her, particularly at the Episcopal church.
Patricia’s daughter Jennifer, another Coffee4Vets regular, returned home from American Red Cross in South Korea to take care of her mom.
Jennifer was taking care of Patricia when she left life. It doubtless was the hardest thing Jennifer ever managed. And she is, by nature, a cheerful and adventurous soul who volunteered her support for the troops for USO and Red Cross in locales that included Kuwait, war-torn Iraq and American bases near the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula.
If Jennifer is robustly spirited, her mom was spritely and vigorous. Most years, you could see the two of them, arm-in-arm, volunteering at the Antelope Valley Mobile Vietnam Memorial, the “AV Wall.”
Both mother and daughter embody authentic public spirit and lived that spirit with actions of kindness and generosity.
Contrast their actions, lives and deeds to the mob of self-proclaimed “patriots” that stormed the Capitol and you see what actual love of country looks like. We are together in this life, so long as we are. And what we do becomes the sum of who we are.
In our local veteran ranks, we have another active, generous spirit, an Army vet of Afghanistan. The City of Palmdale
named John Parsamyan Veteran of the Year a few months ago. Active with Vet4Veterans, he is always putting himself out there.
During the pandemic, he used his body shop, Armed Services Auto Body, as a headquarters for food drives for veterans and family members. He also trains transitioning veterans to re-enter the job market. Owing to the dents and wreckage battering small business during the pandemic, he’s dealt with adversity and it has been the veterans and supporters who have rallied to help John and his family weather the storm.
We have lived through a deadly storm of political, social and literal illness and are living through it still. My sense is that the ones who behave with kindness, generosity and courage are the ones who will sleep well with honor when the storm has passed.