THE Lady Jessica Mary Allen Ashcroft looked from blank square to blank square on the calendar hanging in the kitchen and with her black crayon, stood on tiptoe so she could reach Friday: 14 February. She drew a giant X across that square, knowing she was cheating, since it was only tea time and the awful day was not yet over. – from Martha Grimes’ mystery thriller, Help the Poor Struggler
When will this be over? The pandemic is taking too long to go away, and too many lives. Is it a wonder, Pope Francis advanced his “Urbi et Orbi” message to the city and the world by several days. He could not wait for Easter, the only other time those eloquently crafted words are beamed from the Vatican.
The second delivery of Urbi-Orbi won’t be due until Christmas, which is eight months away. What will/would the world be like then? I join the call to lift our spirits by lighting up the long, dark, apprehensive nights as if we were preparing for deliverance, Christmas, the arrival of the Holy Infant. Indeed, as many cities of the world have been doing – Paris, New York, Rio de Janeiro – let’s light up the skies not only to thank our heroes and martyrs but also to lighten our spirits in hopes of catching a silver lining brilliantly shining somewhere out there.
Through the fog of fearing for our doctors, nurses, technicians and hospital workers who continue to lay their lives on the line, hear the plea of one of them: “We don’t need your praises, we’re not heroes if we could just be given what we need. Masks, gloves, protective suits and equipment!”
Those kinds of “gifts” are also needed, by the way, by those other frontliners, the ones in military uniforms. What a reassuring sight to see good Samaritans ingeniously designing, feverishly sewing face masks by the hundreds to donate. As thousands of masks have arrived from generous donors, we still need to keep those homemade shields coming – all hands on deck! As Bill Gates warns, we have to stock up for the next one. The next wave of the coronavirus that will no longer be “novel” by that time? The next plague from out of nowhere-where?