COLORADO, USA — Sept. 22 was a day we never wanted to come – 200,000 Americans are now dead from COVID-19.
And yet, if you look around, it might not seem like 1,000 people a day have been dying from the novel coronavirus.
Sure our lives look different; more work-from-home, more masks and more patio furniture. But ask yourself this: When you go outside, does it really feel like we are a nation in mourning?
"The families who have lost loved ones to COVID are really the only ones that get this loss," said Lea Ann Lyster, whose 21-year-old son Cody died from COVID-19 earlier this year. "Obviously, other than our family and friends, life goes on. Life goes on. But not for us, We’re living in a new reality. I won’t even call it a new normal because there’s nothing normal about Cody not being here. It’s just our new reality."
The Lyster family is a family still grieving. Cody Lyster's parents said he was a healthy guy with no pre-existing conditions who loved baseball. They said goodbye to him over a video call while he was in the ICU.
"The way that the other 200,000 people that are in our shoes have been forced to mourn, it’s not good. It’s almost unfair," said Kevin Lyster, Cody's father. "We’re all now, for losing a child, part of that club that none of us want to be a part of."
A picture of Cody Lyster greets visitors to his parents' home. Kevin and Lea Ann Lyster also made a cutout for their son in hopes of letting him see one last baseball game at Coors Field.
"As a parent, it is your worst nightmare to lose a child," Lea Ann Lyster said. "There’s nothing worse than losing a child."
9NEWS Phycologist Dr. Max Wachtel explained why it doesn’t feel like our country is collectively grieving the lives lost – but there’s no simple answer.
"So many deaths, yet it doesn’t feel like it’s sunk in the same way that 9/11 sunk in," Wachtel said. "I think it really has to do with the lack with some unifying event happening that was very concrete and very quick, we didn’t see towers fall."
Wachtel said it’s possible that one day when this is all over perhaps the country will come together and almost take a collective exhale and begin to mourn what we’ve been through. Of course, who knows whether or not that will happen, he said.
Every day, the Lysters remember Cody. If 200,000 seems like too big a number to quantify, at least remember Cody.
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