Covid-19 Series #12: Momento Mori

This year It would be wonderful, to have something to hope for. But honestly, I'm not counting on the Happy. In the time of Covid (and post-Trump mayhem), New will be good enough.

Here attached is my final plague-obsessed drawing of 2020 ( Covid Series #12)-- “Momento Mori: Covid Spikes and Cholera Tears”. Any more Covid-related images that emerge in 2021 will be included in a small book along with related texts.

The Latin phrase “memento mori” means, “Remember death” or “Know that you will die”. The Stoic philosophers of antiquity thought this a healthy motto to live by. Today we say, "Gather ye rosebuds...” or, "Tick tock". (FYI: I have spelled memento in my drawing with an “o” which is a technically wrong but an acceptable variant in English.)

My memento mori drawing references both the Covid and earlier Cholera pandemics. My grandfather contracted cholera in Vietnam while serving there in the French Foreign Legion in 1902. A Catholic nun in a Hanoi hospital saved him. Another plague, HIV/AIDS, took my brother in 1988. Hopefully the New Year, happy or not, will bring an end to Covid (and Trumpism) and spare us, our friends and family (and nation) from the twin horrors of 2020. Blessings to so many not spared.