One in a Million

Thursday, May 12, 2022, the president proclaimed that we should stand in the sorrow over the one million people lost to Covid. I saw the proclamation and the lowering of the flag on Instagram as I waited to be let into a Zoom meeting to record my memories of my brother for a project at NPR called Songs of Remembrance. https://www.npr.org/series/967013753/songs-of-remembrance

We go about our daily lives, putting one foot in front of the other, wanting desperately to "get back to normal." But, to me, Normal is just a town in Illinois, one that my brother and I passed when he helped me move west, away from the tragedy of our youth. So I still feel such a sense of loss. It bubbles up at odd times even though he's been gone six months.

Here's a link to the proclamation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/05/12/a-proclamation-on-remembering-the-1000000-americans-lost-to-covid-19/?utm_source=link . This is a president who knows suffering and death, a man who doesn't shove it all under the rug and make like everything will be fine, or normal.

We are all changed by this. My one-in-a-million is my brother and though my grief is my own, I share it because we must, as the President says: "As a Nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow. To heal, we must remember."