At County Memorial for Lives Lost to Covid, a Solidarity of Grief Near and Far, and Thankfulness for Essential Workers

“Yet as horrifying as these statistics are, they’re merely numbers. They can never convey the enormity of what we have truly lost,” Eberle continued. “We’ve lost parents and children, siblings and cousins grannies and paws. Our favorite uncle around to bake the best cookies ever. Our kids’ favorite teacher.
Our neighbor across the street who always came to see us, and never missed a holiday. The kindest, nicest nurse in our doctor’s office. The policeman who lived around the corner. Our losses are not numbers. Our losses are loved and valued members of our human family.”

The rabbi, whose words, delivered to the rhythm of a tocsin against the facade of the government building, called on remembering and cherishing all those lost, but also “those whom our neighbors and friends have lost, and those unknown to us across the world whose families share our grief.”

The eulogy, personal and universal, was one of seven invocations that seven clergy members delivered in the county’s–or any local government’s–first memorial devoted to the losses of the 15-month-long pandemic. The speakers stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder with county commissioners along the monument beneath the flagpoles, facing an audience of about 40 people, most of them government staffers. Surprisingly, and with Sheriff Rick Staly’s exception (and that of appointed Flagler Beach Police Chief Matt Doughney), there was not a single elected official from another local government, though the county had publicized the memorial broadly. It was as if communities don’t yet quite know how to commemorate losses families themselves couldn’t mourn when they had to.

County Commission Chairman seemed to hint at that unsettled reckoning with grief as he introduced the ceremony. “sadly, during the last 14 to 15 months it’s also affected our ability to pay tribute to loved ones and those that have died,” he said. “Memorial services as we all know have looked very different over the past year, and some families have not even even been able to have services for their loved ones that they’ve lost. I have a dear friend that experienced that twice over the last 12 months. I’m sure we all have those kinds of stories that we’ve all dealt with or known in Flagler County.”




Kevin James focused on a theme: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” He offered up the Book of Lamentations, “because it deals with sorrow, grief, and hope. And though he was representing Palm Coast United Methodist Church, he could sound more Calvinistic at times–“All of us here are bad, just some are worse than others,” he said, eliciting the only chuckles of the afternoon, “all come from the same mold, but it’s just some of us a little moodier than others.” With that, he urged his congregants not to blame God. “While we’re here, we are called to embrace one another, to care for one another, to pray for one another.”

Like Manny Lopez, a priest at Santa Maria del Mar in Flagler Beach, Charles Silano, who has no church so much as a diocese of humanitarian works around the county, delivered a short prayer without sermon before giving way to Rabbi Eberle, who said that for all the losses of loved ones, “most importantly, let us truly be grateful for having known them for having them be mentors and teachers and confidence in our lives.” She sang, in its original Hebrew, the verses of Psalm 121 (“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—/where does my help come from?/My help comes from the Lord,/the Maker of heaven and earth….”)

The rabbi’s figure for covid death is nearly double the official estimate of 3.4 million. In fact, it may be an undercount: The Economist last week concluded that based on excess deaths around the globe, and evidence of innumerable deaths not being counted as covid deaths because no test was performed, “the death toll to date is between 7.1m and 12.7 [million], with a central estimate of 10.2m.”




Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Chaplain Ed Reistetter followed John Galloway of Calvary Church in Palm Coast, closing the ceremony’s invocations with a caution almost reflexively forgotten in many circles in Flagler–“the U.S. is now is averaging 33,000 cases of Covid each day, and we’re averaging 600 deaths per day. So the diseases still moving among us,” he said–and gratefulness for the vaccine. “Our collective fears seem to be erased. And we had a feeling of joy that we received the vaccine, and our stress level actually declined,” Reistetter said, citing from two Old Testament prophets words of joy.

His prayer echoed the rabbi’s for the cadence of its outreach to those who, for those who survived, made survival possible in this very community–“each essential worker, those doctors, nurses, school teachers, those employees in Publix and Winn Dixie. Those trash collectors, the cable TV and Internet technicians, the water and sewer personnel, restaurants and food preparers, gas station attendants, and many others.”

Reistetter was thanking God for them all: “And the first responders, Lord, law enforcement officials, sworn and non-sworn at the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. The Bunnell Police Department with Flagler Beach PD, Florida Highway Patrol, Correctional Center, deputies, EMTs at Palm Coast and Flagler County, dispatchers, firefighters and more, who have loved their fellow man and placed themselves and their loved ones in harm’s way and at risk of infection, by working and serving us during this pandemic. Thank you for their bravery, and the bravery of their loved ones–spouses, children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.”