I was invited to be involved in the mail art project The Waiting Place by Ann-Marie James at the Art Station in Sandmuxham. However, I did not anticipate the arrival of the beautiful pack that was sent to me. Enclosed, typed on the thickest paper with the brightest pink ink was an except of the waiting place by Dr Seuss. My favourite part of it is as follows:
Everyone is just waiting…
a Better Break…
or Another Chance.
While reading this and appreciating the words and images running through my head, reality kicked in. There are people who can no longer wait. Families who waited for the worst to happen and those who didn’t have the chance to wait with loved ones this past year. The devastating loss of lives we have experienced as a country and as people has been inconceivable, and yet it continues to grow. Every day the virus is taking our loved ones away from us and while we do everything within our power to keep safe and protect the vulnerable, I have a feeling that we are not at all in as much control as we like to think we are.
Image of The Waiting Place stationary
I thought about it. Three hundred and twenty two days have passed since the first person died due to COVID-19. That first, huge loss of a life on March 5th 2020 was horrendously, just the first of thousands of people to die. But now as we pass 91,470 deaths today, January 20th, 2021, there are so many we can only comprehend individual lives by a daily figure. An electronic database of numbers which seems to endlessly rise. Yet here we still are, waiting for the day to come when the number stops going up.
Image of 322 Days photographed on a previous work which was used as a background
