There are stranger ways to promote a book than having a United States Senator highlight a plot point. That happened when Rand Paul and Senate Republicans tried to use Dr. Anthony Fauci as a bogeyman for the COVID pandemic. What they actually succeeded in doing was remind us of the greatest collective tragedy in recent history.
Since people have short memories, especially about things we want to forget, let’s take a look back at COVID-19.
At the time, my daughter worked at a company that made cleanroom supplies. As early as January 2020, she told me about difficulties in getting personal protective equipment (PPE) because of a virus that was spreading in China and was definitely coming here. When it did, everything changed. We were sent to work at home. We faced layoffs, empty store shelves, and a disease that killed young and old with no cure or vaccine in sight.
At a time when we needed calm, responsible leadership that drew upon the best scientific minds to solve the crisis, President Trump leaned on disinformation and ego. The good work the administration actually did with Operation Warp Speed was overshadowed by talk of ivermectin and injecting bleach. He catered to those who couldn’t tolerate any inconvenience, even if it endangered their lives. As a result, hundreds of thousands of lives were needlessly lost in this country, and Donald Trump cost himself the election.
(Side note: The “Party of Personal Responsibility” should recognize that all of Donald Trump’s wounds throughout his life were self-inflicted. He bankrupted his businesses. He broke his marriages. He associated with Jeffrey Epstein. He lost the 2020 election because of his failed policies. If you want to shame people for making bad choices, start with the folks at the top.)
However, our country’s biggest failure was that we never adequately mourned the people we lost from the pandemic. When three thousand people died on 9/11, it became a national trauma we’ve carried for a quarter century. Over a million people died during the pandemic, and we’ve been acting as if it never happened. The loss of empathy is a more serious problem than the loss of life. If we don’t care about our neighbors who are grieving, who will care about us when we suffer? And if we stop caring about each other, we invite catastrophe to ravage our society, and there will be nobody left to mourn.
This is why I wrote Christina’s Portrait.
The story isn’t about one murder that happened 50 years ago. It’s about all the ways we lose loved ones and how we deal with the grief that follows. Some characters turn to anger. Others become numb. A couple try to use creativity to deal with their pain. One reacts by shutting off her creativity entirely. But all of them learn that grief cannot be addressed until it is faced honestly.
That’s why COVID is the tragedy that begins the story. Benicia loses her mother during the pandemic. She attempts to deal with her grief by making a video about a ghost that supposedly haunts her high school. Her need to create that video becomes the catalyst that winds up healing people 44 years her senior.
The Republicans’ attack on Dr. Fauci has reopened a discussion about the COVID-19 pandemic, but not the one they’re expecting. They’re looking for someone to blame (so the President doesn’t face accountability for his mistakes), but what they’re actually doing is reminding us of the lives that were lost. Until we properly mourn and remember them, we will never find healing. It’s only by facing our grief that we can restore ourselves, find community with others who mourn, and move forward together as a society.
If politicians and the media won’t do this work, we authors will. And this author has just the book we need.
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