Heartbreaking

The hospital is a funky place to be now.

There’s a temperature check at the entrance with a camera that shows ME as I stand there.

Why didn’t someone tell me that I’m gray and balding.

“Take a step back,” the camera told me.

I did.

“Step back,” it read again. There was a big circle there where I assumed my forehead was supposed to be.

“Step forward.”

Bah!

I took another step and a guy there with a mask hit my head with a temperature gauge.

“Good to go.”

I stepped up in line and a large black man stepped to the counter.

“I’m here for my sister,” he said. Then his voice betrayed him. “She died this morning. Where do I go to see someone who died?”

I felt his anguish. He took an unsteady step and then a swarm of people headed toward him.

“Uncle John,” one of the younger looker members of the crew called out, and the heartbroken man stepped into about twelve arms as they reached for him.

Their cries sent my heart straight to my throat.

And I’m not sure why their loved one died so suddenly.

Was it Covid?

They moved as one to a deserted corner of the waiting room and the girl behind the desk called for me.

I couldn’t take my eyes away from that grieving family, and I thought about the thousands upon thousands who have had to say goodbye before they wanted to as this pandemic has raged on.

“I don’t really believe in any of this crap,” one guy told me, just an hour before, at a site near the hospital.

He should witness the heartbreak…

…or see the tired eyes of those working behind the hospital walls.

You don’t believe it?

Death is real.

It devastates people.

💔