The Grim Reaper

It happened a few nights ago.  It was shortly after midnight.  There was a phone call coming through on her mobile phone.  It must be the governor with some urgent message, I muttered groggily, as I stirred from my deep sleep.  It was actually a  phone call from her place of work.  Her colleague had called to pass on the information that one of the other workers at the facility had caught the coronavirus and was in the ICU with COVID-19.

The part of my mind that was awake actually froze.  I had this picture in my mind of the grim reaper paying his visits to the neighborhoods in our county.   Maybe he (always a male!) had found a way to our specific neighborhood, and was hovering around our street (or sitting on the curbside), waiting patiently.  This was the closest we have been to somebody who had actually been diagnosed with COVID-19.  The mind turned somewhat irrational.  There was fear.  I was resigned to not being able to sleep the rest of the night.  Azrael was waiting!  Thankfully, sleep came a few hours later.

I became more rational about the situation in the light of the morning.  I could accept the situation for what it was without feeling fear.  Whatever sequence of events had already been put into play would take place.  We would just have to be more careful.  Whatever will be, will be.  No point worrying about it.  And we are OK so far.

It was last week that the musician John Prine died from COVID-19.  I did not know who John Prine was, but I was curious to learn more about the kind of music that he created.  I was very pleasantly surprised.  It was the kind of music that I would have liked.  I was actually surprised that I had not heard of him before.  He was a folk musician who sang about the life stories of ordinary people.  He sang about the human experience – of love and hate, of suffering, of relationships, of joy, of war, of religion, of addiction, of what he had learnt of the human condition in America.  He had a remarkable gift for words and for poetry.  Each line was effective.  It just flowed out of his very soul. He was a natural.  He served in Vietnam, and worked as a mailman for some time after that, before he started singing.  He was also extremely funny.  You just have to watch some of his live performances on Youtube to know that.  So, I will end this blog with his songs.  It was somewhat difficult to pick a particular one from among the collection of songs I have been listening to the last few days.  So I picked two.  These are performances from more recent times.

In good news, the person with COVID-19 whom I had mentioned at the beginning of this blog is getting better. But the full story of the impact on the facility is still being written.

A Happy and Holy Easter to all of you of the Faith.