Essential Workers Keep Things Moving

Death is very popular these days; with some of the best people are doing it. Just a day ago an artist friend of mine, younger than me by a dozen years, died not of Covid-19 but of Parkinson's. Last week the mother of my son's best friend since high school, a strong woman in her sixties with whom I had weathered the storms of their adolescence over many glasses of wine, finally succumbed to a lifelong chronic illness.

Added to the daily death tallies from the coronavirus, my mood has been dark to say the least. So I was less than sympathetic when my sister, age 79, who lives in a nursing home in New York that has had a few Covid-19 deaths already, bemoaned the death of her roommate.
The woman was 108, so really, how sorry could I be? Besides, my sister had always complained that she talked incessantly and it was hard to get a moment's peace.

"But you said her constant talking was so annoying."

"Yes," she said, "but she was smart and funny."

"I thought you said she was crazy."

"She was, but you can be crazy and smart and funny."

I wondered, was it from Covid-19? My sister replied, "Not sure. She just stopped talking, so I asked a nurse to check on her and, sure enough, she was dead."