Honoring real people behind each Stanislaus COVID death

She looks at the box of dead people on her desk.

It is almost full.

Whenever she hears someone say that COVID-19 is not dangerous, that masks are not necessary, or that most people don’t die, she wants to invite them to visit her box of dead people. She knows a lot about some of the people in the box, less about others. But the one thing she will tell you about each of them is that, were it not for COVID-19, all would have lived another day, or week, or month, or year, or decade, or more.

Part way into the surge, she became the doctor who determined which deaths in the county were related to COVID-19 and which, despite COVID-19, were from other causes. There were startling moments in this venture, moments when she found the lives and living of the dead suddenly flung into her consciousness.

Death is not a shock when someone is 90 and the mind’s eye sees an image of a frail, gray-haired person with tissue-paper skin shuffling slowly down a hallway, hunched over a walker. She found it disconcerting to have this image vaporized when an electronic medical record opened and she was greeted by a healthy, smiling face that looked nowhere near life’s end. She was grateful this did not occur for every person, for it was easier to deal with death when she believed life had been mostly lived, harder when it is clear it was still cut short.

Death is not something on which she usually focused, obituaries not something she regularly reviewed. Still, one day she noticed that most of the pictures in the obituary were names she knew; names recently placed on index cards and added to the box on her desk.

As she stared at the names and faces, she started to read about the living these people had done. That this living had ended prematurely was initially almost overwhelmingly sad. It was hard to avoid imagining the pain of those who remain — parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends — as they come to grips with the reality of COVID-19.

A cruelty of the disease: It is so contagious that we are robbed of the opportunity to touch, comfort, and say goodbye to those we love deeply. She imagined how much deeper the ache when a loved one knew she or he had passed it to the one now dead. It happens.

Eventually reading about the lives and living of the dead was a way to honor them, to respect that they were so much more than “another COVID death.” They loved and lived and were loved by the living.

We are not past this pandemic, but we are weary. It is critical not to lower our guard, important to understand that we are only in the eye of the storm. The wave that is hitting other parts of the country will hit us, too.

If we continue to protect ourselves, it can be a small wave. We, as a community, have the power to do this.

You can protect your community, the businesses within that community, yourself and those you love by wearing masks, using hand sanitizer, and continuing to socially distance. Please do this. The box on her desk is almost full and she hopes not to need another one.

This story was originally published November 22, 2020 at 5:00 AM.