In 2020, the world was short on emotional resources to cope with the scale of death the pandemic, COVID-19, was producing. In U.S. culture, people view death multiple times a week in crime dramas and participate in "taking out" others in video games. Yet most people have not seen a dead body, other than their deceased pets, until aged parents die or cell phones record police killings. The popular culture tells them to "get over it" when they lose a family member.
"Denial is not an effective life strategy," Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, told the world as his state struggled to cope with unprecedented numbers of deaths, inadequate protective gear for hospital workers, and overwhelmed mortuaries. Denial was totally, ineffective as the numbers rose, and later, when some communities opened bars and churches and eagerly embraced their former social lives, only to experience the numbers of the infected grow and one thousand Americans a day dying of the virus.
But, denial was our cultural default, that and secret terror.
In this collection of stories, poems, memoirs, and information, 36 writers from across the US, Australia, Turkey, Britain, Bosnia and Herzegovina share their experiences of death, dying, grief, and recovery. The writers are Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Bah'ais, atheists, and New Age. They are different races and from different immigrant communities. Some write of family loss including suicide, others of war or devastating illness, others of rituals that help them recover. COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter are among the subjects addressed. The stories and poems presented here are moving and provocative, selected to present the amazing diversity of humankind as they cope with the unifying experience of death and loss. This collection is, intended to help people traverse this time of international pandemic and fear and find companionship in their personal journeys as death crosses their paths.
