Death In A Time Of Covid

The following short essay was written while sick with Covid-19. I had lost my appetite and was very weak, losing weight and strength.

Here begins a long story to be told in few words. It is perhaps apt that they should at least begin during a time of global pandemic - a disease; and it is quite feasible that this, or else a related disease, shall be the final end. The last act in the erosion of what we have known as the human race. An end. A dying out. A return to Immortal Oblivion; unity at last attained with an equal mixture of ignominy and nobility, for in this final act neither truly matters. It is simply The End. A story. A human story. A story that all began ‘Once upon a time…’

Decay, whether slow or more rapid in its decline is interesting to observe, and it is more or less futile to try and intervene. The whittling away of what once was, and yet inherent within itself was already written its own end. A loss of strength and appetite to regain that strength. An empty letting go; a relinquishment of something that once seemed to matter but is no longer of any real concern. A soft, mild surrender neither stoic nor undignified. A simple, happy appeasement with God who was always going to win even before the idea of any contest ever began. A knowingness that we came from this Knowing Nothingness and that to this same Incomprehensible All we must inevitably return not at a time of any choosing other than it merely being the Right Time. We let go; we succumb like a tired, beaten animal or a trapped insect, we accept our inevitable fate - and die.