View at dusk from the fire escape

Today Oregon Health Authority reported over 3,500 new cases, “the largest single day total of COVID-19 cases reported since the start of the pandemic.” Omicron is busting out all over. 

I spent the day on the laptop, thanking people for their responses to yesterday’s blip and then communicating with friends who have Covid, friends who are recovering from Covid, and friends who fear they have Covid and can’t get tests.

I was planning to attend the memorial service this coming Saturday for Sylvia Dollarson. She was a great spirit, and her daughter Donna is one of my best friends, but it’s inside a church, and there will be people in that church who I know and love and haven’t seen for nearly two years. Most of them haven’t seen me since my daughter died. There will be hugging, and I won’t be able to hold myself back from it. So no. I have decided I can’t go, and I can’t even say whether I’m more bereft or more relieved that I’ve made that decision.

We have rivers and rivers of rain, wind whistling through the windows, dark and darker mists and black clouds.