Sometime during the 2020 Memorial Day weekend or immediately thereafter, the United States will reach a sorrowful milestone — 100,000 CoVid-19 deaths.
The May 24, 2020, New York Times paper edition featured name ofter name of the dead, an image covering the entire front page. No headlines, no boxes, no articles, just names.
The illustration that appears at the top of the online version’s front page of the newspaper is an animated version of the front page with multiple rows of naming those who have died. If it is still working after the May 24th edition, watch it for a few moments as names change again and again.
Moms, dads, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends, wise elders — each person gone. By now most of us are connected in some way to one or more of the people on this list, and this particular coronavirus is nowhere near finished with its killing.
The link on the above image connects to the New York Times animated illustration of the CoVid-19deaths in the United States. Organized by date, with the first death, Patricia Dowd, at the top and moving on down from there. Next to the date, at the bottom right of the animation is the number of deaths that occurred each day. Interspersed in the images are individual names, where they lived, and mall remembrances about those individuals gleaned from the obituaries.
A Few of the Remembrances
— Saved 56 families from the Gestapo
— Loved reading, especially mystery novels
— Proud single mother of three
— Veteran with a gift for peacemaking
— Loved to figure out how things worked
— Collector of dictionaries and lover of words
— Always wanted to be near the ocean
— No one made creamed potatoes or fried sweet corn the way she did
— Her strength was a thing of wonder
That our wonderful country has come to this — watching so unprepared as 100,000 people die in three months is deplorable.
As Our Parents Age So Do We 