Covid
“Jordyn’s mother, Caylenn Franklin, wailed into the night. ‘I did everything I could baby. I’m so sorry baby,’ she said. ‘I love you, I miss you.’ “
from Fear and hope in an Arkansas pediatric ICU, by Ariana Eunjung Cha in the Washington Post.
Possibly what will finally bring the recalcitrant folks around — at least the parents — is fear of losing a child. Reckless of their own lives, surely they will want to protect their children. There were pockets of resistance to the polio vaccine in the 50s, but those were insignificant to what the country is witnessing now.
Any number of fantasy tales describe being frozen in fear, unable to flee facing the monster. Improbable tale? We’re seeing it play out in real time.
I get that we all have our superstitions — quirks left over from childhood — nagging whispers adopted from our parents. We all have them. But leaving a loaded weapon where a child might pick it up? Playing in traffic — no. Eating possibly poisoned food — of course not. So the vaccination is useless? Are you willing to bet your child’s life? A child looking up to hear what you have to say, don’t you want to tell it straight?
“ ‘You always have times when you cry,’ Shonda Grappe, a pediatric intensive care nurse, said a few hours into her shift.
“The hyper-contagious delta variant has changed much of what we thought we knew about the coronavirus and children — that children might get infected, but they were extremely unlikely to become seriously ill.”
“What is indisputable is that in a swath of low-vaccination states stretching from Florida, South Carolina and Texas, up to Indiana and Missouri, the first large wave of pediatric cases is hitting hard — overwhelming hospitals, dominating political debates over mask and vaccine mandates and throwing school reopening plans into disarray.”
from Fear and hope in an Arkansas pediatric ICU, by Ariana Eunjung Cha in the Washington Post.
Reading a story about a child’s death witnessed by her parent, my heart is broken again.
There is a sweet fantasy in naming a child, Caia — the kind of dreaming that speaks of love and aspiration. Caia Alex Morris was 13 when she died of covid. She was going to make her mother proud.
“Jordyn Franklin had been counting the days until the start of school. She was not just a good student but a great one, and picked up countless awards for the top grades in math (her favorite subject), science, spelling and numerous other subjects over the years. The rising sixth grader from West Memphis loved rapper Megan Thee Stallion and singer Queen Naija, and aspired to be a judge one day.”
from Fear and hope in an Arkansas pediatric ICU, by Ariana Eunjung Cha in the Washington Post.
Even the tone deaf politicians surely understand the grief these parents are suffering under. Don’t they?
The aberration like a pall covering the country, a smokey haze from hell — when will we be able to see the sun again? Yes, the West is on fire, but it hardly matters in the face of our collective insanity. This is how civilizations collapse — from within.
You can write any imaginable grief stricken story and it cannot, cannot describe what happens to one’s soul failing to protect your child. You think you’re able to face any kind of crisis? Perhaps, but what most can’t grasp is that emerging from your child’s death leaves you crippled for the remainder of your life. Losing limbs, losing sight, yes that’s crippling, but far worse is wondering for the rest of your life how you might have saved your child.
And thinking ‘this year he’d be thirty-seven and married by now.’
