I sit here and I cry.

I sit here and I cry.

I cry because people are gone and they’re not coming back. I never knew these people and yet my friends did. These people occupied places within their hearts and while they will stay in their hearts, they are gone from their bodies. Some in their late years, one at 43, and one in his thirties. Gone. As my friend said, “He’s gone. And I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

As the virus spreads from human to human and as governments, businesses, scientists, doctors, journalists, engineers, food workers, and others organize to try to stop this spread, we will hear a lot of numbers. This quantity of cases, this quantity of tests, this quantity of ventilators. We will hear the numbers of the sick, the gravely ill, and the dying. But sometimes numbers don’t pierce the heart. Sometimes numbers float away into space, picking us up and taking us with them. Sometimes numbers just don’t explain what is happening.

It’s stories that help us feel the pain. Stories that cut our wings and drop us barreling towards the ground. And stories that will pull us out of the depths.

I sit here, worried that many more will die. That people, who have been struggling for years with cancer, who are finally starting to see the light, will get blindsided by this virus and be gone in a matter of weeks. That people, who have lifted their families out of homelessness and alcohol abuse, will see it all fall in a matter of days. That people, who have finally had the courage to trust others, will see it evaporate in mere seconds.

“It is OK to cry,” I remind myself. “It is your body telling you that you lost something you really cared about.”

I sit here and I cry.