By All Means

I sometimes wonder if we truly understand the gravity of the situation playing out around the world? Yesterday another dear friend lost a loved one. The illness is ravishing nursing homes and senior living facilities. As I write this, 6000+ are dead in the USA. By the time you read this, that number will likely be exponentially increased. Medical workers, pilots, grocery workers, flight attendants, first responders (etc) are putting their lives on the line to save us all, yet we continue to put their lives at risk by our dogged noncompliance.

Medical workers, pilots, grocery workers, flight attendants, first responders (etc) are putting their lives on the line to save us all, yet we continue to put their lives at risk by our dogged noncompliance. Click To Tweet

In poor countries like Ecuador, people are dragging their dead out onto the curb and leaving them under a blanket or tarp to rot in the street because they don’t have the means to deal with the death rates. In relatively advanced countries like Italy with decent medical care, thousands have perished. In the USA, one of the most advanced countries in the world, they are estimating around 240k deaths before this ends. Or even more.

We have never gotten straight answers. Experts cannot agree on anything. Stay 10 feet, 3 feet, 6 feet away. Face masks don’t work; just kidding, everyone wear a face mask. The truth is obscured by media, politics, and opinions.

The world economy has crumbled and job loss is exponential. Food shortages will most certainly commence if industries continue to be hobbled by the effects of this illness. Small business and aviation, to name a few, have been decimated. Worldwide. We have a global crisis on our hands.

If you are somehow miraculously disconnected with the state of our industry, let me cue you in. I spend a goodly portion of my days talking to individuals in the aviation community and beyond who: are very sick with COVID, have a loved one who is sick with COVID, have loved ones or friends that have died from COVID, have lost their jobs, are in fear of losing their jobs, are isolated from their loved ones far from home, are terrified that their spouses are going to be isolated from them and perhaps even die apart from their families, have had to shut the doors to their small business and dreams forever, are desperately trying to figure out how to balance being a left-behind spouse in this new confusing parameter, don’t know where their next meal is going to come from, have been banned from the birth of their own child, have had life-extending chemo cancelled and are basically triaged to die, feel incredibly sad, scared, hopeless, and alone. People are hurting. I feel every ounce of their pain like a dagger to my soul.

This isn’t funny. The fact that people still don’t care or refuse to do their part to end this travesty makes me absolutely SICK. Our wanton, first-world idea of essential is so incredibly frustrating…disgusting even…that I can barely begin to comprehend it. The simple fact is, people obviously cannot be bothered to social distance for the sake of others. And the penalty is death.

My husband is a pilot. He is…essential. That’s both a blessing and a curse. I am thankful that he has a job…terrified of what it means. In nine days, my husband will be flying across the country in a tin can of strangers with recycled air to sit at an airport in one of the biggest hot spots in the USA, just in case someone needs to fly. He will ride in a bus with strangers to a hotel full of strangers to a room cleaned by strangers and hope for the best. I will be here at home praying fervently for his health, that selfish people do not expose him, that he has enough food to sustain him, that he doesn’t get COVID, that he is not discouraged or scared or depressed, that he doesn’t bring anything home to us.

My husband is a pilot. He is...essential. That’s both a blessing and a curse. I am thankful that he has a job...terrified of what it means. Click To Tweet

When he finally comes home, he will be totally quarantined from our family for two weeks because the risk is now too great. Rinse, repeat. Because, by the time he is ‘safe’ to be around us, he will be off again. Nurses, doctors, pilots, truck drivers, cashiers are all unable to hug their babies, kiss their wives, touch a loved one because the presumption HAS to be that they are infected. It’s heartbreaking to watch. But not as heartbreaking as people we love dying. So we will subsist. Willingly.

But by all means, keep going to Home Depot for your ornamental plants. And by all means keep cursing and complaining when stores ask you to follow measures to protect their employees, other shoppers, and YOU. By all means, keep getting on planes to fly around the country for nonessential reasons just because you can. I’m exhausted with the blatant selfishness being displayed en masse.

Yes, I’m giving it all to God. But frankly, I’m scared. I’m scared for my family. I’m scared for my friends. I’m scared for our elderly parents/grandparents/friends. I’m scared for members of this community. I’m scared for my infirm or immuno-suppressed peeps. I’m scared for my children. Who even knows what their futures look like now…

I guess we cannot be bothered to care until we are directly affected – until it’s our family member, or perhaps even oneself, lying in a bed taking a last gurgling breath in utter isolation from everyone they love. Until they are tossed in a refrigerated tent with hundreds of other bodies like a worthless stray dog because funerals are no longer permitted. Then we lament with great sorrow how the heck this all happened to ME.

That is the true depravity of human nature – a profane selfishness that runs so deeply that we cannot separate ourselves from our wants long enough to care about the effect our behavior is having on others up to and including death. Then again, I guess Jesus found this fact out the hard way.

Forgive us, Lord for we know not what we do.

We don’t know much about this virus, to be sure, but what we do know without a shadow of a doubt is that it is passed on from human to human. It depends on our proximity for its longevity. That means in order to stop it, in order to save lives, we must deny it more hosts, and to deny it more hosts means to break the human chain by staying the heck apart. 

I’m begging you…desperately pleading with you…to stay at home unless absolutely necessary. Put aside your obstinate pride and selfish wants and do the right thing here. You will surely live without your 12-pack of diet soda, but someone – a precious human with a name and family and friends – just might die because you refused to do without it. It’s our moral and social obligation to save lives! People are dying because we cannot be bothered. And that should bother us. Immensely. Plus, the sooner we get this all behind us, the better!

I’m begging you...desperately pleading with you...to stay at home unless absolutely necessary. People are dying because we cannot be bothered. And that should bother us. Immensely. Click To Tweet

If you absolutely must leave your home, please, please, please take ALL possible precautions to protect…if not yourself…then others. Imagine that it is your mother, grandma, brother, best friend, child, spouse lying cold and lifeless in that bed with a tube down their throat…or rotting on that curb…or stacked in that refrigerated tent…and then by means:

STAY. AT. HOME.

Angelia (a fellow socially distanced Pilot Wife)

**To all of our amazing essentials, we thank you. You are heroes to us, each and every one. Stay safe, friends. Our prayers are with you. Always. 

Never miss a blog or encouragement again! Download the app today for FREE!