Death Has Become a Political Prop
After so many months of casualties, the only deaths we talk about are the ones that carry a message
In the early months of the pandemic, in an effort to pace myself when consuming the torrent of news, I allowed myself to read the charts only once a day. Every night before bed, I would dive in, studying the latest case counts and death tolls. I would spend nearly an hour building small curves inside my head, trying to prepare myself for what might be coming to Ohio. I was trying, as so many did in the beginning months, to take control over a virus that had (and still has) no interest in our desires. Looking at a tally made the pandemic into an equation — a deadly one, but also one that felt less than human.
About four months into the pandemic, I stopped. It wasn’t healthy to gorge myself on awful news before trying to fall asleep, and it left me with a sense of dread even in the morning. I also watched friends get sick. Old teachers and coaches died. My friends who worked in the service industry found themselves out of work and anxious. Then our summer of protest began, and all of a sudden, mutual aid networks and on-the-ground protest actions demanded my attention. I threw myself furiously into attempting to uplift the living.
