one unbroken word AUTHOR Luann Lewis
It's sort of like a monster in the distance. Like when we went to visit Universal Studios, back when Jurrassic Park was really popular... they played the sound of dinosaurs tromping, echoing throughout the whole place and getting louder as if a tyrannosaurus rex was appro aching. The visitors were supposed to shiver in delighted “fear.” And we did. But now there’s no delighted fear. There’s just anxiety. I think the phrase, “It’s not if it gets here, it’s when it gets here,” has everybody on edge. It shocks me that folks have bought out face masks and hand sanitizer and toilet paper. But, then again, my first instinct was fear as well. My fear went to a much darker place, though. Someplace that face masks and sanitizer couldn’t reach. I’m sixtysix years old and my lungs are not in the greatest condition. I ponder whether a fight with this corona virus would leave me dead. It tests my faith. The closer I get to when the “pedal hits the metal,” (in other words death)
6 | APRIL 2020
the more I struggle with my belief. At the same time, I can’t seem to notbelieve. There’s something inside me that walks through each day, conducting myself the way a
it's not if it gets here, it's when it gets here.
believer conducts themselves, organizing my thoughts, my plans, my communications the way a believer does those things. But there is a shaky part that wonders what happens after you die. Even believing, we can’t possibly know the magnitude of what is to come. But, perhaps we’re all wrong, I argue with myself, and there’s
nothing at all, just a desiccating body or cremated ashy remains. It was so much easier to believe in a robed Jesus trodding the wide green meadows of heaven when I was young and strong. And I think about my husband. What would he do if I was gone? What would I do if he was gone? I know it will happen one day but I think both of us believe I will go before him. I am older than him and not as fit. But what if he caught coronavirus and died first? Our names: “LuannandBrian,” spoken like one word at church or with friends, or “BrianandLuann,” one word at his work or with his buddies, “Brian’swife,” “Luann’shusband,” what will happen when that word gets chopped in half? It happens to people who have been married much longer than we have and it will happen to us. I always imagine him remarrying. He’s the remarrying type. He would be too lonely without someone to come home to and that thought gives me a
