The tolling of the bells

This coming Monday, May 25, 2020, we will honor all of those who gave their "last full measure of devotion" to lay  "so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom".  We recognize all of those men and women who died in the service of their country.  This year, perhaps more than any other in recent memory, words like "service" and "sacrifice" take on a fuller and greater meaning for all of us.

As of this morning, according to the World Health Organization more than 300,000 men and women have died of COVID-19.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been more than 1.57 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States with just below 100,000 deaths to date.  Some of the men and women who have died became infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 while taking care of patients with COVID-19.  We may never know the exact number of health care workers impacted by COVID-19, but we do know that in the month of April alone, there were at least 133 COVID-related deaths among health care workers in the United States and United Kingdom.  So, this Memorial Day, we honor their service and sacrifice as well.

There is no question that the vast majority of individuals infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus have a minor, self-limited illness.  It is also true that the last major worldwide pandemic that was at least comparable to the current one (the 1918 Influenza Pandemic) was much more severe in terms of the number of individuals infected worldwide (500 million, representing around 1/3 of the entire population at the time) and number of deaths (50 million).  But we cannot ignore - we should not ignore - the staggering loss of human life that has occurred since the beginning of this pandemic.  Can you recall any time in recent history that 1,089 deaths on a single day from any single cause was considered "reassuring"?  People are still dying, every day, in staggering numbers.

For all of these reasons, and more, this year more than any other, Memorial Day 2020 is a special day of remembrance.  Therefore, I hope that you will indulge me by allowing me to spend the next couple of posts on who we need to remember and why.

We are all connected to each other.  I think that the COVID-19 pandemic has proven that assertion.  I am reminded of a poem by the English writer John Donne called "For Whom the Bell Tolls".  The poem inspired both a Pulitzer Prize winning novel (although controversially, the prize was never awarded) by Ernest Hemingway and a song by the heavy metal band Metallica.  The poem's message is an appropriate one for today:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

In three words, the poem's message is this - we all matter.  Three hundred thousand lives matter.  It matters not for which of those lives the funeral bells toll on Memorial Day, for they toll for you and I.