There is hardly a day we pick up our phones without seeing a message about someone dying from COVID, or from some other illness, probably because of their inability to get care due to the strain the pandemic is placing on the healthcare system.

WhatsApp is like the community channel for death announcements and Facebook has become the unofficial obituary online site.

Some families are losing two and three people in the same week.

Many are just overwhelmed, even if they do not personally know individuals who have died – and it’s hard to find anyone like that these days.

Senior physician Dr. Mark Weech said recently that daily deaths in The Bahamas have more than tripled as a result of the worsening COVID-19 situation.

Newspapers are seeing increased business for their obituary sections. Funeral homes are trying to keep up with the demand for their services. A refrigerated trailer has been brought in to hold bodies that are coming in at the Princess Margaret Hospital morgue.

We are clearly facing a national trauma. A pall of death hangs over us, unseen in the lifetime of any Bahamian alive today.

It is all too much!

While scrolling our timeline in recent days and going through countless messages in our various WhatsApp groups, we could not help but feel overwhelmed by it all.

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