letter

A letter to the editor I found at The Denver Post:

Sit quietly

If you sit quietly in one spot where you call home, memories will arrive. I am at a small kitchen table looking up at our skylight. The kitchen has been a favorite gathering place in our home during parties long past. Time sits still if you listen; the friends, the laughter, the bad jokes, pass by in your mind.

We are in a time when listening is all we have. You are able at any age to do so. What you will find, as I have, is that after all of the “vicissitudes of life,” there are people we remember, people we are bound to by birth, people who make an impression, people we love deeply, and people who love us. It is, after all, people that make our existence whole.

The realization that COVID-19 may take me at 71 threatens to crowd out my hope, interrupt my idea that more gatherings will come, and more lovely faces will grace our kitchen.

I hope that those who survive learn from this universal experience that our connections matter. We are together on this wondrous journey. We live together, die alone, yes, but most of the time, we are here with others. To survivors, make this re-discovered truth a reality. That means we share or we perish; no more winner-take-all society. Everyone matters; the baker, clerk, barista, mechanic, truck driver, nurse and teacher. Each deserves the dignity of a decent life, including those we must care for because they cannot care for themselves.

Bill J. Fyfe, Denver