Watermark: 300,000

I follow these numbers with dread. Why do I follow them? It feels like a duty, an obligation. The only way I know to acknowledge these deaths, of people I have not met, people I have not loved. Funerals I will not attend, and mostly, funerals that will not occur for many months.

Today the official COVID death toll in the United States is 225,ooo. Other estimates bring that number up to 300,000:

Now, in the most updated count to date, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found that nearly 300,000 more people in the United States died from late January to early October this year compared the average number of people who died in recent years. Just two-thirds of those deaths were counted as Covid-19 fatalities, highlighting how the official U.S. death count — now standing at about 220,000 — is not fully inclusive.

I am one of millions staying-at-home, otherwise masked, aware of my particular vulnerabilities. Aware of the vulnerabilities of many others in my life. We mask to protect each other, and hope others will mask to protect us.

I am of a generation that was naive, patriotic, attached to nostalgia for what never was. Now we mourn the loss of what we thought was real, the American (United States of American) commitment to equality, possibility, responsibility, and community. We thought if we promised to be good, that would be good enough. Somehow we convinced ourselves that if we believed in equal opportunity, equal respect, equal value for all, it would make it true.

Now we confront the actuality of our citizenship. Now we see (or try not to see) the suffering of our neighbors; suffering we benefit from, suffering we participate in, willingly or not. Now we see the bigotry in our families, in the generations before us, in our cousins and siblings, and in ourselves. We learn about The Talk, if we have refused to learn it before.

And now we must talk to ourselves: stay home, because your neighbors will not, do not, sometimes cannot. Mask up, and recognize that some of your neighbors will not. Learn to value the lives of others, as you have learned to value your own.

Struggle to forgive others for saying these beings, and those beings, and you – matter less. Or matter not at all.

Struggle to forgive yourself, while still holding yourself, and your neighbors, accountable.

I am struggling.