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Page 4A The Braselton News Wednesday, December 23, 2020 Opinion The silence of death When death comes, it comes in silence. There is no crescendo of background music like you see in the movies. No orchestra cues the violins to play their tragic and mournful tunes. Some religions refer to death as an “eternal sleep,” which is about as quiet as it gets. The dead don’t see the tears of the living, or hear the sobs from those left behind. For the dead, it is only silence. For the living, we have constructed rituals of death that are at times a con tradiction. We memorialize the dead, yet for much of our Western culture, that is done from a sense of distance. It is both personal and impersonal, the holding of two thoughts at one time — the dead are here, but gone. Not all cultures ritualize death like this. We were in Nepal a few years ago where we saw the Flindu ritual along a river lined with a ceremonial com plex. From a hospice building, bodies were brought to the river and ritually dipped into the water by family members, then wrapped in a shroud and carried down a paved path along the riv er to a place where a pyre under a thatched roof awaited. The body was laid on the pyre and the fire lit by the oldest son. Family members then circled the body as the flame consumed it, some crying. The ashes would eventually be swept into the river to float downstream into the holy river Ganges in India. Our Western rituals are different and less hands-on, but our grief is the same. But amid the raging Coronavirus, even those rituals of death are becoming more distant and impersonal. Often, people with the virus die alone in a hospital where family isn’t allowed to gather. If they are lucky, some tired, but sympathetic nurse or doctor will hold our loved one’s hand as they pass. The silence of death has expanded, embracing not only the dying, but also the communities where they had lived. • •• This greater distancing of death amid the pandemic is troubling. Even as the nation crosses the 300,000 threshold of those who have died from the virus, many have passed away unseen by most of us. That’s partly due to how the deaths are dispersed across the nation, a few in one town, a few more in another. It isn’t a single place where death is concentrated, it’s happening everywhere, slowly, a little at a time. As a result of both distance and time, we have no real grasp on the magnitude of those deaths. That has caused some to even question the reality of Covid deaths. Social media is full of conspiracy junk that claims the virus isn’t real, or that the deaths are exagger ated. One person recently contacted me with an article that claimed the deaths had been overstated, in his view, for political reasons. And yet. the facts are very clear — over 300,000 Ameri cans have died from the Coronavirus. To deny this is to spit into the face of everyone who has lost someone to this disease. ••• In an attempt to grasp just how deadly this pandemic re ally is, we need to compare it to other historical events. Here are some of the most deadly events in U.S. history: • Spanish Flu pandemic 1918-1919 — 675,000 deaths (maybe more) • U.S. Civil War — 620,000 (there were other civilian-re lated deaths not counted in this number) • WWII — 407,000 • Coronavirus — 300,000 (and counting) •WWI — 116,000 • 1957-1958 flu pandemic — 116,000 • 1968 flu — 100,000 •Vietnam War —58,200 If you look at a single-day count, there have been several days this year where more people died of Coronavirus than died on Sept. 11, 2001: or on D-Day in 1945; or the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. No matter how you slice it, Coronavirus is killing a lot of people in a short amount of time. • •• Given that, why have so many people dismissed the virus as not being very serious? Why have some people ripped public officials who insist on measures to mitigate the deaths, such as wearing a mask in public? It would be easy to blame social media for that. Social media is a sewer of misinformation, lies and distortions, but a lot of people are addicted to Facebook, Twitter and similar sites — addicted so much that they have lost the ability to discern what is fact and what is fiction. It would also be easy to blame “virus fatigue” for the cal low and callous attitude we’ve seen about the virus. People are “over it,” tired of the social distancing, tired of wearing a mask and tired of their jobs being affected. There is a thought — irrational perhaps — that it will just go away if we ignore it. And finally, our political culture has decided to attack anyone who is an “expert,” like doctors and other profes sionals whom we used to respect. The anti-elitism strain in our political culture has a lot of people doubting what doctors tell them, doubting that the virus is even real and doubting that any vaccine for the virus will be safe and effective. It’s a mano-macho attitude, rugged individualism taken to the extreme. Experts have become the villain. All of those things are true, but I don’t think that’s really why many ignore the virus and its deaths. The underlying reason is that the majority of deaths are from our older population, age 60 and above, and our soci ety really doesn’t give a damn if old people as a group die. Many of those who’ve died are out of the public main stream. If they’re in nursing homes, they’re invisible to many of us. We don’t see them at work because they’re retired. And, in a callous way, society expects old people to die, if not from Covid, then from something else. We’re just not shocked when we read an obituary of someone who is older. Contributing to that is the anonymous system we have in place to account for Covid deaths. There is no compre hensive list of names of those who’ve died. Most obituaries don’t mention that a person died of Covid. The most we get is an age, gender and racial profile on the state’s Covid reporting website. The lack of names and faces is making the Covid deaths even more invisible. • •• Jackson County reported its first Covid death on April 8. Since then, over 56 people have died as of this writing. That’s over six Covid deaths per month on average. Since September, nine people have died each month in the coun ty. In August, 11 people died. But imagine if those deaths weren’t mostly from among our elderly population. Imagine what our reaction would be if Covid deaths were mostly among our children and teenagers. Imagine six children in Jackson County dying each month. Imagine six high school football players dying each month in the county. Would our reluctance to wear a mask still be the same? Would we still pack restaurants and churches and sporting events like we do today? In a recent virtual BOE meeting, a couple of parents were concerned about the Jackson County School System’s move to online classes and plans for a hybrid system in January that mixes in-person classes with distance learn ing. The parents were concerned about their children’s GPA and the impact distance learning is having on grades. Understandable — but would those parents be as con cerned about a child’s GPA if Covid were mostly killing children instead of the elderly? I doubt it. I say all of this because as a nation, we’ve done a very poor job of managing this pandemic. Our leadership has been weak. Our culture has become callous. We’ve made health care political to the point where wearing a mask is seen as subversive. We’ve let voices of extremism drown out voices of rea son where some of our leading national doctors get death threats. We’ve dismissed the dying because, well, they’re most ly old and no longer important cogs in our economic and social systems — subconsciously, we see them as expend able. ••• Christmas is coming this week week, a time when we celebrate our children and their joy during the holidays. It is a time when traditionally, grandchildren and grandpar ents embrace and create memories together. But not so much this year. There will over 300,000 fewer chairs at our Christmas dinner tables next week. A lot of grandchildren won’t see their grandparents this Christmas. If the generation that was dying were reversed, you have to wonder if our response to all these deaths would be the same. Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspa pers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com. It’s Ok to ask for help By Dr. Andrea Cook Just this morning, a neighbor asked if I counsel 12-year- olds as her son is experiencing a high level of bullying at school. She said bullying in her son’s school has been much worse since Covid. Honestly, it makes sense to me. As a counselor. I’ve come to understand that “hurt peo ple hurt people.” This simply means that when someone is hurting, their judgement, empathy, and behavior is often im paired. This doesn’t excuse bullying or any bad behavior, of course, but it does add perspective. Since March, we’ve been subjected to, in varying degrees, a downward spiral of illness, economic hardship, academic distress, political nonsense, isolation, depression, and anxiety. The toll on our children has been immensely underrated. If you find 2020 to be one of the most difficult years in memory, just imagine if you have only a few years to compare it with, as children do. Strip away safety and comfort. Take away activities, exercise, and the dedicated, loving teachers and support staff found in schools. Toss out playdates, proms, homecoming, plays, movies, birthday parties, and holiday celebrations. Along the way, parents and grandparents have sporadically become frustrated homeschool teachers. Kids crave structure and can’t help that they are shuffled from remote learning to classrooms and back again due to Covid exposure. They re ceive a hodgepodge of inconsistent teachings on masks ver sus no masks, gatherings or no gatherings. My own teens have experienced all of the above and re peated quarantines from school due to direct exposure. We feel disoriented; flustered and angry at times, isolated and sad at others. And then there are the losses. At first, the hospitalizations and deaths didn’t seem to reach us personally, but now they do. Counselors like me have spent many hours with those in deep grief due to the pandemic. I’ve comforted medical per sonnel who’ve been stretched too far and prayed with spouses and children who have had to make terrible medical decisions on behalf of their loved one. It is all just so, so much. With all that is going on, we often forget that our young people hear us talking and they add our sadness, confusion, and tension to their own. This is our opportunity to show our children that we can manage adversity, learn from it, and grow through it. We can teach them to take better care of their mental wellness by first, taking care of our own and then, encouraging them to develop coping skills of their own. We have learned that kids who re ceive mental health support have a lower risk LONG TERM of addiction, suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, bullying be haviors, and a variety of heartbreaking issues. I am inviting all mental health professionals to volun teer an hour or two (or more) each week to see a school- aged student for one session, free of charge. Send me your contact information, credentials, and location and I’ll compile a list to be distributed throughout our commu nity. While our mental health community has been very busy since March, we don’t mind adding a little more to our plate if it means that our students know that they are not alone, they aren’t crazy for feeling overwhelmed, and that we are all in this together. Whether it’s just the free one hour session or a family decides to continue the path of counseling and wellness, gaining the skills to work through hard times, anx iety, and depression are worth their investment of time and energy. Counselors can often be flexible and conduct sessions by phone, Facetime, or Zoom and use many methods to help folks feel safe and comfortable. Whether you choose to visit a counselor this season or not, please follow some simple steps that will help you and your children maintain consistency and self care. Get fresh air and exercise daily. Observe normal bedtime and awaken on time for school. Eat healthy and regularly. Drink lots of water and not a lot of alcohol. Participate wholeheartedly in school, even if remote. Read helpful books and articles. Spend time in prayer, meditation, or quiet. Speak with kinder tones and do nice things for others. While social distancing from family and friends, don’t for get to connect through texts, calls, or Facetime. Talk about your feelings, not just your activities. Finally, please take time to listen well to one another and offer words of encourage ment and grace. Blessings and good health to all. Dr. Andrea Cook may be reached at drcookappt@gmail. com The Braselton News Mike Buffington Co-Publisher Scott Buffington Co-Publisher & Advertising Manager Alex Buffington Editor Ben Munro Sports Editor Wesleigh Sagon Photographer/Features MEMBER • Georgia Press Association • National Newspaper Association • International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors Postmaster: Send Address Changes To: MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. PO Box 908 Jefferson, Georgia 30549-0908 Web Site: www.BraseltonNewsToday.com Email: alex@mainstreetnews.com Voice: 706.367.5233 Published weekly by The Braselton News 33 Lee St. Jefferson, GA 30549 Periodical Postage Paid at Jefferson, GA 30549 (SCED 23390) Yearly Subscriptions: $20 How to come out of a storm? Dear Editor: Unfortunately, there are families, vari ous organizations, and yes, even places of worship that encounter instability. Most of us know when uncertainty is present, a storm is brewing. The key is the severity of the storm. Moreover, the United States has been through several severe storms and have revived. Therefore, even with the presence of Coronavirus, we will recoup. Although the road is not easy, the United States of America has some fantastic peo ple to get beyond this pandemic. Yes, these are people who possess peace, encouragement, observance, pa tience, love, and efficiency. I believe even with the loss of many lives, the United States of America has people that have and will continue to help families during bereavement. Furthermore, they will aid others with the necessities of loss of in come. How can I say that? They have the wisdom to understand the importance of sensitivity, and the people of the United States of America are impartial. With understanding and wisdom, the public and private sectors will recoup. During the recoup process, everyone will make ethical judgments and sound deci sions. The people will commit to strategic priorities that create sustainable benefits for the organization related to the mission and values. I consent with William Arthur Ward: “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” Not only is wis dom vital, but sensitivity is pertinent to the recoup process. We must steer clear of indifference. So. we must utilize sensitivity. Furthermore, the recoup process will be more natural once everyone exercises kindness and compassion as we go beyond just reason and logic to perceive and respond to others. Also, we recoup by dealing tactfully with others in emotionally stressful situations and conflict. Equally important, everyone must know what information to communi cate as well as to whom. We must be able to relate to individuals with various eth nic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. To recoup with wisdom and sensitivity is a necessity, and being fair must be at the forefront. No matter the demographic or what ever is attached to an individual and an organization’s past, being impartial and reasonable will save someone’s family and organization. Thus, it will be a short term investment with long-term stability. I believe you cannot go wrong with being moral and doing what is right. Now there may be the occasional morn ing, afternoon, or evening storm that will pop-up. However, everyone in the Unit ed States of America has the ingredients I believe will aid in recouping within a few months versus two or more years. So, I concur with Mattie Stepanek: “We all have life storms, and when we get the rough times, and we recover from them, we should celebrate that we got through it. No matter how bad it may seem, there’s always something beautiful that you can find.” Sincerely, Timothy Sands Senior Pastor of New Hope African Methodist Episcopal Church, Hoschton and President and Chief Executive Officer of Esdras Innovation, Inc. in Atlanta.