The Changing World Out There

It’s been a long week since Maryland lockdown rules imposed last Monday March 16, 2020.  I am incredibly grateful that Jen-Jen, my best friend (my own-claimed life saver) and a retired U.S. Air Force Nurse, invited me to visit her late husband at Arlington National Cemetery.  It’s an annually tributary trip for her on his birthday.  She told him that spring has finally arrived; however, we are in the unprecedented deadly global Coronavirus pandemic.  She sincerely wishes the outbreak will be over soon and we are all in together to brace for the worst.

  Today, March 26, 2020, the only Sunny day forecast for this week.  The week-long gloomy and rainy days has left the paths into mud.  My heart is so full.  Her incense burning scent drifts across rows and rows of marble headstones carved with only simple words, birth & deceased dates, Wars fought & family members.  I was inspired by the fallen soldiers from the historical Wars, either on the national and international battlefields.  I couldn’t have dreamed of the world we are facing now. 

The precious splendor of our natural world suddenly changes to freakish anomaly amid the global coronavirus outbreak.  The cold spring air mixed with the burned incense fragrance travel as far as the three soaring U.S. Air Force Memorial adjacent to Pentagon Building behind the bushes over the Potomac River.  We, along with the field maintenance workers and a couple of family members like us have the privilege to visit.  The eerily feelings of quietness in the cemetery gave way to my memory of unnatural silence of 911 aftermath.  I was working for Montgomery County Government then in 2001.

 The unusual “calm and confidence” advice from the U.S. President and the respected White House Coronavirus Task Force predict the worst has yet to come.  March 26 was the virus’ deadliest day so far in Europe with 1,918 deaths recorded in 26 different countries.  The U.S. has the 233 deaths in one day!  Still ominously, the numbers increase by day!  The more we listen, the more we concern ourselves with an unknown future and the greater the likelihood we will worry.  How vulnerable we are these senior high-risk groups!  How terrifying I have the feeling when I saw the American airline passing through the Washington Monument from DC Reagan International Airport.  In awe, respect and gratitude this embodied U.S. Symbol stands; however, it still evokes the memory of that enormous plumes of white smoke from the plane crashed on the Pentagon Building.  I witnessed it from the 13^th floor of my County Office through far away skylines of Pentagon Building in 2001.

 Hang in there! Tough seniors!  We will say, “Hello, Spring!  No Cold Rain and Coronavirus will last forever!”