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My girlfriend’s aunt died this morning of COVID-19. I don’t tend to post much personal stuff here, but indulge me a short thread.
La tía Yita and her husband ran a melon stand in El Salvador. He was shot dead by a stick-up man when he refused to give up the take.
At the height of the civil war, she protected her family by *walking* to the US, through Guatemala and Mexico, returning to El Salvador when tensions died down many years later. She and her family were tough.
Elena said that she didn’t understand why her aunt had suffered so many blows in life. I don’t necessarily see it that way. She sounds like a hero to me, a person who went to extraordinary lengths against a backdrop of brutal hardship to protect others.
So when I see people who, through pig-ignorance or callousness or through being misguided, refuse to take even the smallest measure to slow the spread of this disease, I am outraged. More so than ever.
Wear a mask. Stop spreading harmful conspiracy theories. Do the bare minimum so that others, whose lives have been replete with good works, might go on to do yet more. And if you can’t, or won’t, then unfollow. I won’t be baited into one more “debate” on the subject.
