A READER from Maryland writes:
A man I knew died recently under sad, but now common, circumstances. His large, senior-living facility closed its doors to all visitors, depriving him of the personal touch of his loved ones. Not only did the lockdowns prevent his relatives from traveling out-of-state to see him, his daughter and grandchildren who lived only a few miles away could not visit him daily, as they had been doing. Instead, they spoke with him every day on the telephone, and the only people he saw during his final weeks wore masks and gloves. Although the nurses and assistants might have been very kind to him, nonetheless, I would venture to say he died of loneliness.
I don’t believe that doctors foresaw the inhumanity of forbidding all visitors to patients in nursing homes and hospitals. An old woman from my church was not permitted to be in the hospital with her Corona-infected husband; he pined for her company, but the hospital forbade her to enter. Missing his wife and attended only by masked medical personnel, his illness was exacerbated, and eventually he was placed on a ventilator, dying shortly thereafter, alone. Similarly, my neighbor’s cousin died yesterday in a large, luxurious nursing home. Her sisters, cousins, and children, all of whom lived in the area, no longer came to visit and she could not understand why. She contracted the Coronavirus despite all the precautions. She stopped eating and eventually died, having not had a hug from a loved one in more than a month. Surely, the doctors and politicians could not have imagined that the social-distancing policies that were meant to be saving lives would also be hastening death.
In many plagues in history, at least one out of three people died in the plague year in many localities. [Editor: That would be about 100 million deaths in America today.] Nevertheless, people were permitted to gather together with fewer restrictions on work and worship than we have, and allowed and expected to care for their sick loved ones as we are not.
As C.S. Lewis pointed out, “you and all of whom you love were already sentenced to death before the [Coronavirus came along], and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in very unpleasant ways …. If we are going to be destroyed [by a virus or recession] let that [disaster] find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts …”
So we struggle on in this beautiful world of ours. Eating less when food is scarce. Praying at home. Bringing cheer to our neighbors who are afraid or lonely or hysterical. Paying attention to the birds and trees and giving glory to God for all his gifts. (more…)
