I had hoped to write on my blog about last months court hearing and update on the court date our family and friends went through on March 12th. The second defendant in the killing of my son Bryan Cooke and the shooting of me, appeared in court to face a plea deal of Voluntary Manslaughter. Unfortunately I am still trying to make sense of the Judge’s confusing sentencing. While I asked the State of South Carolina represented by the Ninth Circuit Solicitor’s Office to give me an explanation immediately following the sentencing on March 12th, I have heard NOTHING a month later… crickets? Not surprising, and I am sending a second request by mail to see what, if anything the Solicitors office discovered on our behalf??
It was the day following our court hearing that Coronavirus seemed to finally invade our lives in earnest. Discouragement followed by even more discouragement. How have you been weathering this worldwide pandemic here’s several questions to open this blog with which have impacted all of us at some level of concern this past month.
1st – Have you been reading about how to keep yourself safe from contracting the Coronavirus?
2nd – Have you been watching the 24/7 channels where you can get what they all refer to as Breaking News about Covid-19?
3rd – Have you come to agree that sheltering in place does save lives?
4th – Have you been frightened (at some level) by what you see and hear of this Pandemic?
For most of us, the unknown can, at times, create anxiety.
Self preservation can be a good thing. Two years ago I was hell bent on preserving my own life when an 18 year old fired four shots from a .40 caliber pistol four feet away from my body. Surviving became the only thing I could think of to act on. It reminds me of the hoarders we’ve been reading about. Perhaps you have run into one at the local grocer these past several weeks. Hoarders often find themselves in what can only be described as a sort of pretend survival mode.
Then there are people who are far more drawn to the activity of acquiring information today which, given new circumstances about this contagion, can change markedly by tomorrow.
“Well” you say, of course the info can change but is it really “IT” (the Breaking News) that is changing or is it “US” who are not changing. In a country initially asked to self quarantine, we’ve now been told to shelter in place, orders to hopefully save others and hopefully ourselves from contamination. An order focused on reducing the curve.
I can’t believe I am writing and posting a blog about this. The vast majority of us awaken to a surreal world which is anything but a pretend world. While it’s hard to shake, we all know it is real in spite of the talking heads who can’t control their own conspiracy theories devoid of reality.
When I use the word world here I am envisioning you and me because in times like this, surviving here and now seems primary if in fact the World is to survive. Seriously, what can we do in our smaller, lower case worlds that we have yet to do out of inconvenience?
We Americans, who have lived lives of convenience for all these many years we’ve been in the World (at least this American has), now confront an internal existential threat to ourselves; can we suffer through the inconvenience this Pandemic requires of us?
I want to say, “we’ll see”, but right now that’s not at all helpful given the increasing number of human beings who are testing positive each day and the human beings who are dying because we live in a world that was in many ways unprepared for this disease.
Now, you and me, WE, have to change our lower case world. And that, is becoming increasingly necessary if survival is going to be our goal, a goal worth sacrificing for everyone.
MC
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