Dear Natalie

I see you.

I can't begin to imagine the tribulations you face every single day.

You've been my neighbor for six years, the mother of my closest friends, and whom I've never paid too much attention to before. I'd notice you at potlucks and barbecues, birthday parties and Thanksgiving tables, a thin anxious wisp of a woman, a mass of pale blond hair and pale makeup, a leafy door-squeaking-on-hinges voice and bony wrists, merging with the wallpaper and the kitchen, always there, but almost invisible. Your husband, a boisterous father of two boisterous girls, laughs loud and takes up space, but you disappear in the throngs of guests, a lost hostess, a wraith careful to stay in the shadows.

Smiling. Anxious to please. Living vicariously through your two girls, the shooting stars of your world. Plagued with guilt for not being the perfect housewife and mother. Considered uptight, fake. PTA curls their lips in disgust. She doesn't prioritize her kids, she spends too much time at work, she's a bad parent, she doesn't cook, her poor husband. As progressive as society thinks it is, working mothers who save lives every single day are accused of neglect. Of maternal failure. Blamed for their kids' flaws, as if kids are supposed to perfect dolls. Blamed for everything.

Then, we tuned into the news. At school, shoved with my friends in the back of the classroom, flashing images. First, it was Wuhan. Then it spread like the plague, leaving death and disaster in its wake. They attempt to sterilize it, to placate our fear, attach a cold scientific moniker. COVID-19. The cheery crepe paper words of the people's president, not enough testing kits as his lips twist into a smile, hospitals that fill up faster than gutters in a flood. Death toll rises, swells up like the highest pitch in a crescendo. Shelter-in-place. The doors of the school locked tight, local businesses shut down, tears behind shuttered windows. Silent, empty streets.

New York. California. Arizona. Oklahoma. Michigan. Illinois.

Outrage. Buzzing static of the hospital. Crowded rooms. Wails. Groans. Lines of stamping feet and anxious faces you can't bear to accost. You keep a level head, worn and sleepless, checking beds, running back and forth, fetching this, getting that. Scrubbing, disinfecting, hoping against hope that some supplies will come. Safety is a privilege. You held the tiny hand of a little girl, watched her eyelids flutter and shut. Watched her mother sob into her hands and shuffled outside, knowing nothing you could say would wash away the anger in her eyes. Old eyes that crinkled around the edges on wrinkled faces and winter-scrubbed cheeks. Trembling hands, fevers, lungs burning for air. Delirium. You try, you cry out, but you just can't save everyone. To them, they're just statistics, hard numbers in tiny print on a page. No, they're not. Living breathing humans with strong handshakes and warm smiles and whose homes smell like baking bread and lavender, suddenly cold, suddenly covered by a white sheet. With beautiful bright-eyed little girls and little boys, with chattering teeth and wide eyes at night, with no mommy or daddy to cling to, to pull them close. Who'll never wipe their chins or tell them to bathe or bring orange juice to their soccer games. They're humans, with lives that should matter and should count towards something more than tiny print on a page.

You drag yourself home, collapse on the bed. Your husband groans on the couch, your children fast asleep, phones clutched in hand. 5 am shift. You pile your unwashed hair in a cap, scrubs and plastic gowns, masked and gloved. When you look in the bathroom mirror, red rims your eyes. The days blur past, the nights haunted with wraiths of groaning patients and hospital queues. Too many warm bodies gone cold, too many families broken. And they can't send us kits. They say it's too expensive to fund vaccines, life saving vaccines. That little girl with pigtails clasping a dolly to her chest could've continued to breathe, to live. After all, the army needs more money. The president. The government. The people have enough.

Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!

81,414 dead.

Filed away, nailed shut in coffins. Americans who smiled and laughed and held hands, who kissed their spouses and have children who ran into their arms, waving report cards. Dads who barbecued on Saturdays, with aprons that said "Kiss the Cook" and burned the toast and told bad jokes. Moms who worked nine hour shifts, but were never too tired to help their sons do algebra homework, or tuck them into bed with a kiss and a tousle of their scruffy hair. Aunts who made pot roast and wore apple-bottom jeans and swore with spatulas in their hands, but hugged their nieces and nephews tight when they came over, slipping them candy when Mom wasn't looking. Uncles who gave them toy trains and drones on Christmas, and read stories to the chubby-cheeked toddlers, and enveloped you in a big bear hug on graduation day and made the best toast at your wedding. Grandmothers that smoothed down your hair and sewed your prom dress and gave you advice with a wink. Grandfathers who taught you what it's like to love somebody, who bandaged your scraped knees, and showed you their old journals and sepia toned photos, who smiled at your grandma across the room and told you to find one just like her.

We're not just numbers. We are Americans, who pay taxes and love our country despite its flaws. We are Americans, and they were too, even when the same country they pledged allegiance too as little boys and little girls left them behind. Abandoned them to die in the name of the economy.

81,414 mother, father, aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas dead, and that's all they can say.

You want to hide, to curl up, to shut your eyes to the world that doesn't hear you sob into your pillow at night, doesn't hear your silent screams for help. But you don't. You pick yourself up, scrub your face and hands, put on those gloves and masks and plastic wraps, and go from bed to bed, checking temperatures and holding hands, hoping against hope that help will come. If there's a God in heaven. You sacrifice everything, and they can't even shed a single tear.

I see you, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I see you, and I pray for you daily.

I see you, and am so humbled by the work you do, by the lives you save.

I see you, and can't find the words to tell you how grateful I am, and how badly I want this to go away.

I see you, all of you invisible heroes.

I see you, because I know you.

Natalie.

You have my undivided attention, and I'll never forget what you've done to save us all.