Dear Coronavirus,
I’m really starting to get tired of you.
I’m tired of the way you speak fear to people.
I’m tired of way that everyone talks about you. Until you show up. Then no one speaks your name. It’s almost speaking of death itself.
I’m tired of seeing the way you make people suffer. The way you suck the air out of people. Literally. How person after person has tried to tell me how hard it is for them to breathe but they can’t even get enough air in their lungs to tell me they can’t breath. But they don’t need to say it. I see it. I see you. And I don’t think I even need to say your name. They know it. No one needs to say your name. So we’ll just avoid the word ‘virus’ all together.
I’m tired of watching so much suffering with medicines in hand but feeling so empty handed. Seeing so much pain with no way of properly treating it nor a treatment that’s proved to safely work.
I’m tired of this pit that you have left in my stomach. This pit that tells me that I might as well not waste my time on the person that you have clearly already claimed as your victim. This pit that in one moment has a little bit of hope that things might get better, just to be crushed by the text I read the following morning saying the family doesn’t need the medicines anymore. They are buying a casket instead.
I’m tired of the way you make people buy any and every pill because they are desperate to have something, anything to help their loved one to breath again. As if every ounce of their hope is in put in this pill that will finally be the one to heal them. Have you seen what you make people do to buy medicine? The way they have to stand in pharmacy lines for hours. Literally hours. With not even the confidence that they will find the meds there. Because if they don’t find them in the first pharmacy, they’ll go wait endless hours in the next line. Just to leave pharmacies empty of medications. Now you’ve made me not just wait in line for the list of meds for patients, but instead search what feels like every pharmacy in this city to attempt to complete my patients med list. Each time I leave downtown, you twist my stomach just a little more as I try to figure out what I’m going to say to the family member of the sick person whose meds I couldn’t find that day.
I’m tired of the power you think you have over people. Trampling through our cities and homes. With something so simple as a cough, you weasel your way into another innocent victims life. All the while deciding how badly this person will be affected. Will you make them suffer a few weeks? Linger awhile. Maybe you just need someone to pass you a little further, so you hide in the shadows and don’t make yourself known to them. Just to have the next person die a cruel death thanks to you.
I’m tired of the way you have overwhelmed and collapsed our health care system. Exhausting all our efforts in tracking you down and containing you to leave us with nothing to offer care for the people who are sick with any other disease. Disease that we know how to cure! But you like the steal the show, taking all the attention and energy, don’t you?
I’m tired of the way people refuse to go to the only few hospitals left open because they know when they enter, they won’t leave again unless it’s in a bag. And actually, I’m tired of how you keep closing hospital after hospital. Almost as if you smile and check another one off your list while we hang our heads and shut the doors to another opportunity of aid.
I’m tired of the way you take ones life. The way you steal their mourning with lack of a funeral. The way you make them dig their own grave (literally).
I’m TIRED of you.
But am I surprised you’re here? No..
Do I think you’ll be leaving anytime soon? No..
So while you’re here, you should know a few things…
My joy is not found in my health.
Which means you can’t steal it.
My hope is not found in the “good days” or the easy days.
Which means you can’t rob me of it.
And my peace is not found in any pill. Which means that I still got it.
Your darkness cannot put out my light.
If anything, darkness just makes the light shine brighter.
Your grave it has no power.
Because there is a grave that conquered death already. And it doesn’t hold a body.
So welcome COVID. As much as we would like to see you go, more specifically as much as I would like to see you go, we know you’ll be around for awhile.
But as you stay, realize this one thing.. You think you’re winning. But you lost before you even started.
Your darkness.. it cannot… it has not.. and it will not.. put out our light.
Our hope isn’t found in you. And our hope isn’t even found in a cure.
Our hope is in Jesus Christ.
Sincerely,
Riley Brinkman, RN, Iquitos Peru
