Covid's 1 Million Gone

In early July, I remember waking up on a sticky morning and seeing a headline that a 41 year old Broadway actor, Nick Cordero, just died of Covid. I paused as I sipped my coffee but kept scrolling. Four months since March, I had started to feel numb about the rising cases and deaths. Still outraged at our president, still scared that the virus might find its way to my family, still in disbelief at the number of lives lost, but starting to feel numb. I didn’t pause to learn Nick’s story.

But this week, I stumbled across Amanda Kloots’ Instagram account. And I started reading her stories of loving and losing Nick over the 95 days that he was hospitalized, while being a mom to their infant son, while running her own fitness business, while trying to take care of herself. My eyes blurred with tears as I read through the moments she shared of her journey with grief. Her videos recorded in her car outside the hospital, snippets of single parenting their baby, the song he half wrote and she finished and recorded after his death, her stories of tremendous loss but unwavering optimism.

It’s all so, so real. Over 1 million deaths worldwide. Over 1 million families who are aching. Over 1 million stories like Nick and Amanda’s.

This week, Trump tweeted, “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.” Amanda replied in her own post, “...Unfortunately it did dominate our lives didn’t it?...I cried next to my husband for 95 days watching what COVID did to the person I love. It IS something to be afraid of. After you see the person you love the most die from this disease you would never say what this tweet says...”

Over the next 26 days, let’s vote for Nick, for Amanda, for the 211,750 Americans who’ve lost their lives to the pandemic. Let’s keep reading and sharing their stories so we don’t become numb to the numbers but instead remember them. Let’s vote to literally save people’s lives.

And at the same time, let’s keep living our lives with beauty and love because this year has taken a highlighter to the saying “tomorrow is never a sure thing.”