Life and Death in an Epidemic

I miss a lot of them a lot,

he said choking back tears.

Someone else said that there

are so many walking dead,

those who have lost some-

one so close that they can’t

imagine life going on as it

were.  They are the hungry

dead, the thirsty dead, but

the dead never-the-less.

There are those who

know those in the night of

the living dead and then

there are those who, through

no merit of their own, per-

haps just dumb luck or grace,

make it through the worst that

broken relationships and disease

and death could throw at them

and, believe it or not, survive

and emerge from the land of

the living dead and enter as

never before the land of the

living and perhaps even find

someone with whom to share

that good life, or perhaps be-

cause they have found someone

with whom to share that good

life for as long as that good

life might last as fragile as

they now know it to be, some-

thing so many others have yet

to learn.