Golis: Crying at firetrucks, and other acts of gratitude

In the aftermath of the 2017 fires, I offered a confession of sorts: “Crying at firetrucks is not something we usually do, but you know how it is. These brave man and women came from far and wide for one reason and one reason only — to help us survive.”

The tears came as we passed a caravan of bright red firetrucks, heading south on Highway 101. Each bore the name of a different Southern California city: Torrance, El Segundo, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach. The firefighters onboard were among thousands who came here to battle the devastating October fires, and 17 days later, they were heading home.

“We rolled down the windows, and as we passed each truck, we waved a salute,” I wrote, “and then we started to cry.”

Back in 2017, it never occurred to anyone that another crisis of historic proportions would arrive on our doorstep in less than three years.

But here we are. And, once again, we encounter those moments of unexpected emotion — of sadness or shock or gratitude, or all three rolled into one. It might happen when we see the photo of a nurse holding the hand of a dying COVID patient, or when we learn someone we love just secured a vaccination date.

The combination — devastating fires, devastating virus — has left us with much to contemplate.

I recall those firefighters from 2017 when I think about how grateful we should be to the people who have helped us survive this pandemic.

As with the fires, we have endured fear, frustration and heartbreak — and circumstances worse than anything we could have imagined. After 13 months, more than 560,000 Americans have died from this airborne virus.

And more would have died, save for the people who showed up every day and kept us going.

The list begins with health care workers, of course. Especially in the first days when protective gear was in short supply, they risked their lives to help others, often left with the sadness of holding the hand of a dying patient because there was no one else to hold that hand.

With tens of thousands of people out of work or otherwise displaced, community service organizations — staffers and volunteers — pursued new opportunities to help. Along the way, they found ways to overcome the limitations imposed by Zoom meetings, masks and safe distancing.

During the lockdown, sheltering in place required people who were willing to not shelter in place — grocery workers, delivery drivers, warehouse workers, truck drivers. farmworkers, packing house employees, police and firefighters, public servants of all kinds. They put themselves at greater risk so others could avoid the risk.

Thanks, too, to the people and companies who created the vaccines and to the government agencies and health care providers who managed their distribution. The fast turnaround of effective vaccines qualifies as a near-miraculous achievement, one that expedites our way back to some semblance of normalcy.

Let’s also take a moment to acknowledged the thankless task that was handed to political leaders and to public health administrators. We might wish they were better prepared and better able to deliver a consistent and coherent message, but we also know this job was never going to be easy or simple. The need to juggle economic and public health considerations was always going to be challenging.

Let me mention, too, the work of people at this and other hometown newspapers. In conditions no one could imagine, they provided the good news and the bad news we needed to understand what was happening in our towns and what we needed to do to remain safe. Their efforts have been indispensable.

Apologies if I missed someone. So many people needed to make contributions if we were going to get through this last year together.

Thanks to them and to the vaccine, we are beginning to get our lives back. Friends and families who are vaccinated now dare to get together and share stories and a few laughs. These engagements become both weird and familiar at the same time.

There will be adversities we don’t yet understand. We have a long way to go, managing both public health and the economic impact on local businesses. Local businesses will need your support.

Meanwhile, we honor the people we learned to call essential workers. If we didn’t always value them as we should, perhaps the pandemic becomes a teaching moment, a time to remember that we’re all here together and we depend on each other.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.

You can send letters to the editor to letters@pressdemocrat.com.