April 2021

Upon beginning the second year of the pandemic:

I am moved by the kindness of science  

Of

The biologists

The epidemiologists

The virologists

The evolutionary biologists

The structural chemists

care physicians and nurses

The reassigned medical and para-medical professionals—psychiatrists, speech therapists, and others

respiratory therapists who helped us to breathe

though many of us never found our breath again

occupational and physiotherapists

who helped our bodies remember how to move

and taught us to move differently in the aftermath

The aids, attendants and orderlies

Who keep everything moving in hospitals

From the supply rooms and the laundry

To the pharmacy and radiology

Delivering bags of I.V. solutions and medications

Those who accepted working extra shifts

Over and over

Treating us with compassion

The caregivers who spoke to us and for us

Saw past the ventilators

Saw the person in the comatose body

All those whose work is to help lighten the load

Taking on the responsibility of our suffering

Our fear

Our dependency

Our frailty

Our mortality

Resting their hopes on our resilience.

You will have saved us

You are science’s kindest face

You are passionate, committed, diligent

You collaborate across continents

Single-minded

You are hope

You are the biggest kind of Love.

Drawing by Chris Riddell, from the book by Michael Rosen, Many Different Kinds of Love

Postscript

The gaps between the pieces I write grow longer. It’s not that I have less to say but more about how all of the threads of our lives during the pandemic have become intertwined.

I feel entangled in my cancer and the other, savage illness caused by the COVID-19 virus, that has changed the world and most lives in ways we’ll only be fully aware of when this crisis is over.