I have carried the loss of my mother for 4 and 1/2 years now and the pain does not lessen with time.
She had health issues and may not have lived to see today even without COVID-19... but we lost her in the height of the panic and could not have a normal funeral service or mourning process. We were denied a proper goodbye by visitation limits in hospitals at the time they were being over run.
My story is so sadly not unique. I have spoken to many others who lost family and loved ones in the pandemic. Our losses are both personal and communal at the same time, but what we are facing now - especially today with the gutting of the HHS, CDC, FDA and more is cruelty of the worst kind. I feel raw and exposed and violated by Trump and his ilk in essence learning NOTHING from their disastrous handling of the pandemic and their abject cruelty in response to returning to power now. It is dredging up a lot of anger and wondering 'what the hell? did we learn NOTHING? was it all in vain?'
I will never fully recover - as I know is true for many when we lose parents or loved ones. Many of the people I have talking to also have holes in their lives that just don't heal. Part of me - the part that came from mom, the part that was empathetic and kind - feels as if it has been violently murdered. This just feels worse today because of the actions being taken and the risks it is causing.
Added to this is the destruction this has all wrought on my father as well. Following mom's passing, he suffered a stroke, followwed by a fall and broken hip and then dementia progressing and accelerating as well. He has lost literally everything he held dear - his wife, his home, his freedom and mobility and his mind a peice at a time. I now visit a shell that once was my model of what it meant to be a man, a husband, a father and to do so while remaining a decent and caring person as well. It beaks my shattered heart a little more every time he can't remember the details of a conversation started minutes earlier.
To top it all off, my grandparents and my wife's grandparents were WWII veterans - my paternal grandfather and his 5 brothers ALL served in Europe and the Pacific in WWII at the same time... my dad was born in 1943 and met his father in 1945, AFTER the fascists were defeated. And for all that sacrifice and blood shed and privation, their reward was only to die before seeing their country turn to embrace the very thing that they fought against. Its inhuman.
The United States that I grew up in, that I loved being a citizen of, that was truly a global leader an avatar for freedom...its as dead as my family members and others but its being further defiled every minute. Why? So that warped and maladjusted billionaires can have MORE money? If being the richest man on earth can't provide happiness, or if being a self-proclaimed billionaire at nearly 80 years old can't provide perspective and empathy for those who go on after you, then what the fuck is the point of any of this?
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