Obituaries and 61,000

I have been best trying to figure out how to consume the massive amounts of COVID news without it sending me into a massive depression. Sometimes I skip the news. Other times, I try to read something funny, like an article on how to dress on a Zoom date during the pandemic. Hint: wear pants.

Sixty-one thousand Americans have died from the corona virus. In two months. And this is very likely underestimated due to people who died who were not tested.

This seems to be a jolting number, like now this is getting real. Why is 61K a shocking number to me? Maybe in my mind I had the number of opioid deaths a year (2018) in the U.S. in the back of my mind: 67,300. Why do I consider opioids and not cancer or heart disease? Opioid deaths to me seem senseless and deeply preventable, and therefore extremely tragic.

I've been reading obituaries, mainly because there are so many, and there isn't much else in the newspaper with less arts, sports, and non-COVID news. While it is sad when people die, it is interesting to read about their lives. Some died from COVID, others did not. Here are three that struck me recently. I am sure there will be more.

Bernard Gersten worked on Broadway at the Public Theater with the famous Joseph Papp. Gersten was the nice, quiet guy who cleaned up many of the confrontational messes left by the hot-headed Papp. At the Public Theater, Gersten dealt with accounting, advertising and agents, things the creative Mr. Papp didn't like. Behind a great but difficult man was a mensch who made it possible for the first man to succeed.

Cesar Quirumbay was a men's tailor who worked for Leonard Logsdail in New York. Mr. Quirumbay made custom suits for the wealthy and the powerful. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1998 from Ecuador. He was married and had five children.

Irrfan Khan was a Bollywood actor who was in a few big Hollywood movies. The only movie I've seen with him was The Lunchbox which one of my colleagues from India recommended. (I recommend it, too.) I couldn't finish watching Slumdog Millionaire because I thought it was too sad, but Dev Patel is adorable.

Reading these, I think of what these people have accomplished, but more importantly it makes me think about how I want to spend whatever remaining time I have left. And it isn't so much about what I want to accomplish or what I want in my obituary. I have finally realized this is my time, and only my time. I have to decide how to spend it. I can fill it with angst, regret and resentments, or peace, love and serenity.

It isn't a hard choice.