Tonight we received confirmation of 100,000 known deaths in the United States to COVID-19. The news is heartbreaking, not least because so many of these deaths could have been prevented if leaders had chosen to act differently, and because so many more preventable deaths are likely. So my heartbreak is tempered with anger.
But today, my overhwleming feeling is grief. Some who died were people I knew, repsected, admired and loved. Some were neighbors. Some were artists. Some were strangers who, in ways most of us will never know, made this world better with their living. Each one of them had a name, a story, a family, and a community.
The AIDS emorial Quilt in Washington, DC
In 1985, a group of activists started The Names Project, creating a giant quilt, with panels made by families and friends of AIDS victims. Today the quilt has over 200,000 panels, each representing a name. Seeing the quilt on display for the first time at the National Mall inspired Cathy Fink to write the song “Names,” which she and Marcy Marxer recorded in 1989.
And I know that my name could be there
And I feel the pain and the fear
And as human love and passions do not make us all the same,
We are counted not as numbers, but as names.
Cathy’s song remains, after all these years, one of the most powerful I know. With her permission, I’ve made a quick home video of the song.
I’m going to keep singing this one, hard though it is to get through without tears. I need those tears; I think we all do. They help us hold on to our humanity, and as deaths contnue to grow, they remind us that “we are counted not as numbers, but as names.”
excerpt from The New York Times
The Song and the Sigh 