The dead are no longer strangers.
The days of self-imposed isolation slip past, some faster than others.
We awaken each morning to a cup of coffee and the latest slate of bad news.
How the coronavirus is inching forward, death by death, to threaten us, to forever change our lives.
Like a once-distant hurricane, it comes.
A stalker. A molester.
The Grim Reaper.
Once mere statistics, the disclosures are now getting personal.
It’s not just about numbers anymore.
It’s people we know.
Like the stages of grief, there are steps to this pandemic.
At first, the death reports came from a far-away Asian country. Then the monster in the petrie dish came closer. It jumped international borders and then oceans.
It hit Seattle and we raised our collective eyebrows. There were new dark orange circles on the tracking maps, tracking the spread of the outbreak, looking like blood spilling from a body.
We went home, closed our doors and we waited.
The number of new U.S. cases -- and deaths -- began to double in not weeks but in mere days.
It was supposed to be only the aged who were susceptible. Then people in the prime of their working lives were taken.
Then teenagers.
Then infants.
At first, we were told that surgical masks weren’t necessary.
Now, apparently, that’s not so.
And so we mask up, we wer gloves and wash our hands.
We call our family and friends, seeking consolation, offering words of encouragement we can. We pull our covers tighter at night.
We brave the outdoors, if only to preserve our sanity.
A friend in northern Nevada described snowshoeing in the eastern Sierra with his wife, how he stopped to whistle some birdsong and a black cat chickadee landed on his hand.
The story made me feel hope.
Meanwhile, the news online has worsened.
Suddenly, the virus victims are no longer numbers and they are no longer anonymous.
They're people we’ve heard of — movie stars, politicians and performance artists — a reminder that, by golly, if they can get this goddamned thing, then so can we.
Actors Tom Hanks and Idris Elba. Prince Charles. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Prince Charles.
Then over the weekend, a collective gasp.
Singer John Prine was sick with the virus.
“Oh, no!” music lovers wrote on social media.
Not him.
People posted his favorite songs, called for fellow fans to put him in their thoughts.
Amid the death reports, there have been rays of hope.
We read eloquent dispatches from the other side, people who contracted the virus and then recovered, people who then wrote about the ordeal.
They advised, they begged.
Stay home.
Still, the virus marches on.
Now, on social media, a new family of messages come.
The inevitable next step.
Friends of friends and their family members.
Like a fellow soldier on the front lines struck down by a sniper’s bullet. This time, it’s not just our army, but our platoon.
Our band of brothers.
We think of Anne Frank, huddling at home with her family, hearing the sounds of the Gestapo breaking down the doors of a neighbor.
This is what terror feels like.
And we know our chances are better, if we can only stay home.
Just this morning, a friend and former colleague, a retired newspaper, sent a dreaded message.
A family member stricken with COVID-19 had been taken off his ventilator.
The verdict was final.
He wasn’t going to make it.
My friend bravely rallied his friends to stay the course, to stay home, protect themselves.
“And I’ll add one more thing,” he wrote. “I’ve done everything from fly through typhoons to cover the Marine invasion of Somalia, and this thing is the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. It scares me to death.”
Now, we're hearing that the death toll could well reach 200,000.
And so we wait.
Many of us have yet to hear news that someone we know personally has been infected, but that day will come.
Maybe it will be one of us. All it takes is one moment of inattention. Grab the wrong shopping cart. Open the wrong door.
We’ve stopped planning for the future — not August, let alone next week.
We wonder: Will weever shake another person’s hand ever again?
We take walks at night, when there are the fewest people, the street lights glowing like London at night, in a fog.
Meanwhile, the virus keeps coming, this Jack the Ripper.
The days slip past, some faster than others.