The pandemic you have lived through is not the same as mine. The hospital staff who cared for COVID patients without adequate protective gear, the senior citizens isolated at home, the parents thrust into working at home while becoming their children’s tutor, those widowed by COVID, the COVID survivors with long haul symptoms – all experienced the pandemic differently. The burdens have fallen unevenly. COVID highlighted the racial, ethnic and class inequities in our health care system. Even though we cannot truly understand each other’s pandemic experience and the burdens of the pandemic have fallen unevenly, we have all lost something in the past two years.

This Sunday, we will commemorate two years of losses during the pandemic. We will have a ritual centered around our losses and how we have coped both individually and as a community.