Number 148

 500,000

Four days a week I help serve a (free) community breakfast at a downtown church. Holy Grounds it's called. Both the people I work with, and the people we serve have become family to me - it's hard not to care about folks you spend that much time with. But just like any other family, things sometimes don't run that smoothly; and a person can find themself at odds with another person. Apparently today was my day. I didn't feel grouchy when I first woke up, but by the time I arrived at the church (late again!), I certainly felt like I had, perhaps, woken up on the proverbial "wrong side" of the bed.

But this post isn't really about me being grouchy and losing my temper. It's about something much more profound than that.

Because of COVID, our breakfast meal is strictly a take-out affair for the time being. Our guests are allowed to come in - one at a time and masked - pick up their food, and head back outside. It's not ideal. All of us would prefer to serve a meal that the folks could eat inside the building, with their friends nearby. But that's not our current reality.

In any event, one of our regulars comes in from outside, and he needs a mask. Not a big deal, really, we probably give out 3 - 5 masks each morning. The problem is, no exaggeration!, this particular gentleman needs a new mask every damn morning. Since there is an expense on our end, and our supply of masks is not infinite, we've started to be more pointed in asking him to remember his own mask.

Today he pushed back and said something along the line of, "It really doesn't matter, COVID's not a real thing, anyway." I instantly saw red, dropped all pretense of affability and replied, "There's more than 500,000 dead Americans that might disagree with you."

"It's not real. I know. I work in science."

"Well then we'd better dig up all those people and let them know."

[end scene]

I didn't write this post so that I could rant about about the many different ways ignorant people choose to celebrate their stupidity. (I've mined that particular vein in my many diatribes against Trump and the MAGA crowd.) And I didn't write this post because I feel guilty about losing my temper. (Because I don't.) I also didn't write it as a platform to discuss the politics of mask wearing. (It's a piece of f*cking cloth, just put it on and shut-up you big whining babies.) I wrote it because we have lost so, so many people, and they deserve a moment for us to stop and remember them.

Over 500,000 dead Americans. Untold millions of dead across the globe.

It is to weep.