Bearing Witness: Losing our Humanity in the Pandemic’s 2 Percent
Written by Kathleen Cogan
We are collectively living through a once in a 3 or 4 generation phenomenon, a pandemic. It’s overwhelming to consciously know we are living in extraordinary times. The profoundness of this hits me in waves : how this will challenge us as communities and individuals, the social and economic disparities that it will (and has) so painfully revealed. More broadly: the ways folks, myself included, might start to examine, question and explore the fragility of their mortality, thus how to best live this one life. But more than this I feel a profound grief. A grief for what we have lost and will lose during this lime. It is these losses that are most certainly the most painful and the suffering these losses will cause in their wake.
In February I overheard friends, colleagues, and pundits alike say things like, “well only 2% of folks who get this virus will die.” My heart would instantly become heavy, like a weight crushing the center most point of my chest. What I was feeling was pain. 2% is someone’s grandparent, parent, beloved friend, confident, or simply another fellow human.
2 % is a grandparent who doesn’t get to see their grandchild graduate from high school. It’s a mother who never gets to take another holiday with her daughter; a father who doesn’t get to ask his adult children one more time, “Have you changed the oil in your car lately?” 2% is a friend never getting one more two hour conversation about nothing at all, or more good laugh or cry with her best friends. 2% is you. 2% is me.
As a peace pilgrim, I’ve traveled to Holocust concentration camps and memorials to bear witness to the lives, needlessly and inhumanely lost in a genodcide. And here I am now, bearing witness in my home country, to death by disease, many of which seemingly could have been prevented.
To bear witness means to turn towards the inhuman, and then to (re) connect with the universal humanity in every life. Bearing witness here means looking at the cruelty in an overloaded healthcare system, and its devastating effects: folks are dying, alone without their loved ones, without a goodbye, a kiss or one last squeeze of the hand. To say that only 2% that die from this virus, in part, the inhumanity of this pandemic.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can read, watch and feel, the stories of those that die from COVID-19. We can intentionally read past the headlines to the life of the deceased and of their experience while sick. We can take the time to read the first hand accounts of family members and healthcare workers posted in social media. We can connect to their experiences, their pain and suffering. Because connecting is always our way back; its way to reclaim our collective humanity in callus rhetoric.
This, of course, is the challenge. It hurts. It is painful. And if you are anything like me, this might remind you of your own mortality, and of those you so dearly love. Which brings me to the core of bearing witness: while we are different are also are the same (both can be true). We are all connected. Witnessing the death of those that have suffered from COVID 19 is the way we can connect our universal humanity and to ultimately heal. It’s to say, if only in a moment, I see you, your pain and your life. Your life and your pain will not be dismissed or forgotten because you matter.
If you feel you are struggling to cope with the trauma that the pandemic has brought with it, trauma therapy can help. Contact us today to learn more.