"Quint-Essential" Pandemic

Song Written by Essential Worker

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By Robert J. LaCosta

 

I had “escaped" from a New York City hospital on February 21, 2020 and realized how lucky I was after hearing news “spreading” about the coronavirus. My spinal fusion operation was originally scheduled for early March and it was only around that time that I realized how close I had cut it.

 

I can’t say that it was out of this fortune that I began to see COVID-19 in a light that grew from grim to dim to bright. First, there were the everyday workers at the grocery stores, big boxes, hospitals, first-responders and families with kids making the best of it by doing good.

 

Like everyone else, I wondered what part my wife and I would play during this crisis. Our role in this drama came to us in the form of caregivers as my mother-in-law needed a safe quarantine that would span three months. Mom carried some aging issues with her into the house and my saintly wife made sure the meds and meals were on schedule and doted on her as if in a bed and breakfast. Her care for her mom never made the news, but it made it into my heart.

 

There were over forty movies spanning springtime to summer. Easter classics like Ben-Hur and Jesus of Nazareth and The Sound of Music were just a few. It seemed the longer the film, the better. We got to appreciate the twinkle in Aunt Bea’s eyes as we set a Guinness Book of World Records on the number of Andy Griffith reruns. Mom never tired of one episode. Gunsmoke and Ben Cartwright followed without hesitation until our elder’s finally eyes closed as she slumped on the couch for a night of peace that she and every scared senior needed.

 

For my part, I couldn’t close our hearing instrument practice because people need hearing aids during viruses or no viruses. With severely restricted hours, no waiting room stops and occasionally playing “Sonic Specialist” to car windows to meet frightened patients, I would quiver in my shoes when I walked back in the house while never letting on about my fear that I would be the one jerk in our entire family to send my lovely mother-in-law off with a fever to the chancy emergency room. That never happened. My silent prayers were heard.

 

It was during these hazy days that the phrase “Love Goes Viral” came to me while driving. It began with remembering actual nurse’s aides from Ghana who had taken care of my stroke-ridden father-in-law for seven years in a nursing home. I was picturing that those same beautiful ladies were still working through COVID. 

 

There was an Asian-American doctor in Brooklyn that I knew and the global pieces and players in the song began to fall into place. Being from New Jersey, I had the sense of what was going on down in Manhattan. From there, I imagined all of the small and big towns and before long the verses were brushed with Americana while the chorus and bridge were finished with international hope.

 

A four-minute song doesn’t seem like much of a contribution compared to the work of the heroes that the lyrics and music portray. But a viral four minutes might vaccinate against despair and lead others to realize that the roles and lines they’ve been assigned may well help move this drama along to a conquering conclusion.

 

Perhaps “Love Goes Viral” will simply go on record as being an essential song by an essential worker.

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“Love Goes Viral” is a single and the title track on an upcoming album. It’s on iTunes and many other outlets as well as on YouTube. LaCosta has instituted a “Profits-for-Non-Profits” to steer a portion of the earnings toward some groups that are helping the most vulnerable. See lovegoesviral.us