‘Disaster anniversaries are powerful in part because they’re communal. The bomb went off in an instant. The tornado tore through town in an afternoon. The earthquake rocked the whole region at once. The pandemic, though, did not come to everyone on the same day, or even in the same month, and nor will its anniversary. In this way, as in so many others, this is not an ordinary disaster.
‘For each of the country’s more than 526,000 dead, nine people grieve. Hundreds of thousands have spent time in the ICU, an experience that can bring its own unique trauma. And then there are the smaller losses, the ones that did not threaten lives but still changed them. Today is the day I missed my mother’s funeral. The day I would have gone to prom. Met my grandson. Gotten married.’
Read here (The Atlantic, Mar 12, 2021)
