Thankful

For those partaking in a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner tomorrow, let’s hope you don’t have to witness this from the family comedian as they walk maskless through the door: “Hellooo, I brought yams. Or maybe the plague.”

Better to stay home in your own bubble.

As my friend Dinah said this morning during our writers group Zoom, think of the last Thursday in November 2020 this way: “It’s just a meal.”

She knows of what she speaks, after losing her husband, the ever-sweet William, to COVID-19 in April. Gone too soon like so many others who have been ravaged by this deadly virus.

And she was sick with it, too. Still recovering. Something my friend says she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy, if she had any, I mean.

The bottom line: More than 250,000 people won’t be at any Thanksgiving table this year — because they died from COVID-19 in the past eight months.

I read something startling this week about how hard it is for most of us to comprehend such large numbers and thus easier to dismiss them.

They call it “psychic numbing.” It sets in and saps us of our empathy for victims and discourages us from creating the safe bubbles needed to control the global pandemic.

So, how much exactly is 250,000 deaths? Since I’m terrible with numbers, I didn’t know. Then I looked it up, citing my sources, of course:

• From CNN: Ten times the number of American drivers and passengers who die in car crashes each year.
• From NPR: More than twice the number of American soldiers who died in World War I.
• From the Washington Post: Enough to draw a vast hole in American’s heartland, if the deaths had been concentrated in one area.

Still clear as mud? Think of it this way.

As Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg said: “There were not six million Jews murdered; there was one murder, six million times.”

The U.S. death toll as of 1:30 p.m. today was 260,591, according to the Johns Hopkins University Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center. That’s enough digits to numb even the most compassionate among us.

Need something else to take your mind off those empty dining room chairs tomorrow? As my partner, Rebecca, likes to say, traditions are made to be broken. Start a new one.

Call someone in your life to whom you owe much gratitude. Thank them for their love and kindness, and remind them that you’re glad they were born.

Simple. Easy. Thoughtful. (No texting, sloths.)

Then have another slice of pumpkin pie or whatever you haven’t had several helpings of yet.

You’ll feel better about staying in your self-imposed bubble, and it will likely ease the pain of watching the Detroit Lions lose yet another Thanksgiving Day game.

Remember: It’s just a meal.

Happy Thanksgiving.