Open your heart, Idaho, and weep with those who grieve over their loss from COVID-19

The other day I opened my front door to find two women standing there, hugging each other, weeping. They apologized for just dropping by. They heard of the memorial to COVID-19 victims on my front lawn and they needed to see it, today.

“We just lost my husband, her father,” the older woman said. “He died alone.”

But they were lucky, she told me. He knew he was dying, and he was able to call them to say goodbye.

I stood there, taking them in, holding them with my eyes, listening to their story, unable to embrace these masked strangers, whose grief and vulnerability rose of them like a silent scream.

What could I do for them? Helpless, again. Helpless against this rising tide of pain and grief in our community. Helpless against the anger, the divisiveness.

So I just stood there. Because isn’t this all it comes down to? Sharing their grief, their pain, their longing for a community, an acknowledgment from others that so many people like them in our wonderful state of Idaho are now dead from this virus?

They took a flag from me to write his name on, to plant later this week when other family members would be in town to join them. Did I mind if they all gathered there on the sidewalk in front of my home? Their family had not been able to see his body (they had so wanted to) because he had COVID, and without embalming, and that was too costly….

Did I mind? Did I mind a family grieving together, sending their loved one off?

But what a thing, that strangers are weeping before me, asking if they can hold a memorial in my front yard. Think about that.

No, this is not World War II (though that war killed 1,419 Idahoans according to The U.S. Army Center of Military History; Idaho deaths from COVID-19 are set to surpass 1,300 in the next few days). But what we are living through right now, right in this very moment, this is a national tragedy.

This is a time for weeping, for wailing, for reaching deep down into the depths of our very being. This is a time to truly look at your neighbor, to try and understand what they may be experiencing.

Weep with those who are grieving, for those we have lost.

Open your heart, Idaho.

We are all in this together.