Glass Hands: A Eulogy on the Anniversary of the Pandemic

Hands pressed to glass

On the fence across from the long-term care home families leave memorials for auntie, kokum, baba

Ink runs in the rain and half-mast flags

A table set with no guests to ask

Like bells ringing in classrooms calling eternal recess

Bless those who grieve

Unable to even leave kisses on foreheads

Bless the nurses as they move from bed to bed

We've scrubbed our hands until they cracked and bled

We read page after page of death announcements in the newspapers

Our elders, repositories of wisdom went first but then the rest of us

Living and dying through this curse

Coughs in lungs and final gasps

Some days feel like we are the last on Earth

Too fast we say, too fast

We didn't even have goodbye

And the wind blows over winter grass

My mother's mantra: this too shall pass.

Ours is not a funeral mass

We learned to mourn on Zoom

Christmas spent in empty rooms

We'll meet when the pandemic is through

But month after month and still the cases rise

In gloom loneliness intensifies

I no longer know your face behind the mask so I learn to know your eyes

But it's not enough.

And we try to bring to mind our last conversation

Amid the devastation we find hidden seams of human kindness

Bless the grocery bringers to quarantine

The minimum wage labourers who clean

The developers of the vaccine

The bus drivers and hospital workers at hour sixteen of their shift

Bless those who believe they will not be missed

It's the vulnerable ones most likely to be lost unseen

This is a lesson for we who have too long turned our heads at inequality

Believed in austerity

Now we understand the severity of policies that leave too many behind

Oh now we have learned to cry together.

Let us forever remember those who cannot come in from the cold

We should never again allow the deaths in shelters

In cell blocks, at home alone

No, let us make a promise in the now for the future beyond this

May we never again value people less than profits

Let us speak our love before the coffins

Let us pause not seldom, but often

May our hearts soften

Let us visit those living in isolation

Let clean water flow from the taps of First Nations

We can re-learn how to care for each other

We can re-learn how to share with each other

Let us honour the dead by committing to the living

Let us honour the dead by committing to giving

We are not broken though we are diminished

We still have time and this is not the finish

There is faith, and hope, and it's within us