In A Time of...

If anyone is wondering why the Kung Flu seems to have disappeared from the headlines it’s because as much as the media loves a plague, it loves a fire more.

But just because the Kung Flu is not dominating the headlines don’t think for a minute, that you can take your mask off.  And maintain social distancing, even if the people you see in the glow of the fires, aren’t.

Did you ever realize that life had passed you by?  That you’d missed a great opportunity, the chance of a lifetime?  Well I did.  My late wife was a Pediatrician and she had a private practice.  And, I realized if I were still there doing what I used to do, getting the charts, logging in the patients, sweeping and mopping the floors, throwing out the garbage and wiping up little kids vomit.  If I were still doing that now, I’d be a hero.  But then I’m not doing that anymore and I’m not a hero. 

Then I remembered that HBO series about the 101^st Airborne Division, ‘Band of Brothers’.  They were the first guys in on D-Day and they held out in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.  One of those guys was interviewed at the end of the series and he was asked.  “Do you think of yourself as a hero.”  And, he answered.  “No, but I served in a Company of heroes.”  And, I’m thinking maybe that’s me?  But no, that’s not me.  The Kung Flu wasn’t around back then when I was doing all that.  Although I got sick a few times, quite a few times.  But no, not good enough, not even close.

But then I realized that the other Doctors, Nurses and Medical Assistants that worked with us are still out there.  And, on the front lines too.  So maybe it’s like the end of that movie Troy about the ancient legendary war between Greece and Troy.  The war goes on for ten years and when it’s over, a whole lot of guys are dead.  It was, as if there had been a plague.  You could say the scourge of war, is like a plague.  The Greeks are victorious but they’ve lost their number one guy, Achilles.  The last lines of the movie are Odysseus saying.  ‘If they ever tell my story let them say I lived in the time of Hector, the Breaker of Horses.  I lived in the time of Achilles.  I lived in the time, of heroes.’  Yeah maybe that’s it.  I lived in a time of heroes too.

Dicens simile factum est

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