On October 10, I received the news that Zia Sandrina had died that morning. Sandrina is my aunt in San Benedetto del Tronto (Italy) with whom I lived for a year when I was 14, and whom I had visited in 2002. Sandrina was a few months from turning 100 years old!!!
Sandrina did not die of covid, but because of covid she died alone in a hospital. That cold fact is hard to imagine…to die alone, in a strange place, with perhaps no one next to your side, and after having lived such a long life, that, is, a cold fact of life.
I got the news on my cell phone as I checked email. Such important news received in such a cold manner makes me wonder about the coldness of technology. Would receiving a handwritten letter be better, nicer, more human? I am not begrudging the messengers of the news but only feeling the coldness of technology, how it unceremoniusly sends the news. Sandrina deserves more, better. I am noticing and witnessing this moment.