500 Thousand

      If you are like many families back in the day when things were more “normal,” you looked forward every year to all of you going to your favorite place for the family vacation.  You will no doubt have your “spot” that you liked to visit, be it at the ocean or the mountains, or somewhere in between.  The point is that you really looked forward to that time away from your everyday life and having a chance to “catch up” on the things that had changed since your last visit.

     Now I’m not about to try and guess what your favorite location might be but I’m only going to mention a few places that you might have considered (although maybe not!)  But this is my blog post and I’m thinking that kinda gives me the right to decide what places I want to talk about.  So, some of those places may have been Toledo, OH, McAllen, TX, New Haven, CT, Mission Viejo, CA, Grand Rapids, MI, or perhaps Raleigh, NC.  I’m sure you have heard of at least some of those places or it wouldn’t be difficult for you to do a little research and find out something about them.  In different ways any of them would be an interesting place to visit.

     Or maybe your tastes of having a vacation are leaning toward some “out-of-way” place in a foreign location of the world?  You might be interested in somewhere like Gold Coast-Tweed, Australia, Reynosa, Mexico, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Beijing, China, or Imbaba, Egypt.  Most of these places you have probably not heard about unless you are already a world traveler with remote interests.

     Of all the places in the United States or for that matter, in the world, why did I specifically decide to use the ones I mentioned above.  It was for a very good reason.  All of these particular places have a population of around 500,000 people!

     Now imagine that one of the places I mentioned above IS the very spot that you and your family have enjoyed visiting for vacations.  Imagine that every year you looked forward to returning to that location to see some specific sites or just to take note of what has changed within the pasted year.  Imagine this year you plan to make that same trip.  But when you arrive you find that the ENTIRE city population is GONE!  Every single person in the city has died!  How would you feel?  What would you be thinking?  Could such a thing happen in only a year and then you sadly realize, many people have taken this lose in stride and merely continue with their everyday existence as if it were “no big thing!”  Surely, someone would take notice!  Surely more people would care!

     That is what has happened this past year during the COVID pandemic!  In the United States the equivalent to ONE of those locations has vanished with some 530,000 deaths from the sickness.  If you consider the pandemic on a world scale, about FIVE of those locations have ceased to exist with some 2.63 million deaths!

     However, these numbers are not just the equivalent of a city located somewhere in the United States or in the world.  These numbers are mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters!  These numbers were REAL people that are no longer with us.  Loved ones who will never and should never be forgotten. 

     Any of us COULD have been part of those numbers.  There were many others who became sick with the virus and recovered.  We can all be thankful for those.  Never let the callousness build up in us that we become insensitive to the pain and hurt of others.  We look forward to a time when things will be better.  But now, we suffer together because we’re only human!

QUOTE TO CONSIDER

THOUGHTFUL GEM

"Never think you are alone.

We all suffer together."