How To Speak Of Death To Your Fellow Americans To begin with, take off your funeral suit but do not put it completely away in the back of the spare room closet. Do not forget how it looks on you and how often you’ve had to wear it. When you begin to speak, remember that some folks have never been to the number of funerals you’ve attended. Some have never been to any and will not understand a word you say but talk anyway. Some don’t believe people die as often or as unfairly as you know they do and you will not make them feel grief easily or quickly. Talk anyway; you might need visual aids. Some only see death when it’s as close as the next room so when you speak of death to them, you will have to simulate the sound of death knocking on the adjoining wall to make them understand. Some of them will smirk and speak of Darwin and some will speak of Jesus. All of these people will speak of what is right and what is deserved; most will stare you down and shout the w
Religion in the COVID Wing Waking, we see her glove the door, adjusting her cloak, light capped in the shadows of the morning ward, her bearing the proof of faith I have mocked my entire life bowing to us, frightened father & child whose fever is breaking up. What fortune she would leave the realm of light to find us here pinned to the bed, startled from a blanketed chair. Godsend The baby in the COVID wing is crying during quiet hours. Through the glass, I see the source, just sitting up, the parents on both sides attending. Knowing to be here meant it was in danger, as my child was, in our room, because a strain of the virus forces the heart to stop its own & all the insurance & human eyes on micro- scopes, & every money-driven ingenuity cannot guard, only monitor. The child’s cries did not pierce, because I believed it would live. Not for innocence, or virtue, or mercy, but for youth, a divine shield she was given that this day