Unfinished Farewell

ABSTRACT

As COVID-19 spreads across the globe and the number of deaths continues to rise, the heartbreaking experiences are being replaced by collective mourning. As German journalist and pacifist Kurt Tukholsky once said: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic”.

When we look back at the help-seeking posts of those who were lost, those who died of unconfirmed COVID-19 testing reports; those who committed suicide out of despair; those whose life-saving medical equipment were being taken away and those who lost their lives due to overwork and infection from their patients... Many of them were not included in the official statistics, and they are likely to be forgotten over time. They were not being treated fairly when they were alive, and they were not being mentioned after they passed away.

We spoke to one of those families. One daughter said: “After this pandemic, who will remember someone such as my mother – she had nowhere to go for medical treatment; she was rejected by the hospital, and she had to die at home?”

This is one of the reasons why we built this online platform. We want to document as many people who have left us because of the pandemic as possible. Our website also includes the help-seeking information these people posted before they passed away. These are the evidences they have left in a particular moment in this pandemic. We hope to provide a space for family members to express their grief and for the public to mourn the dead. Behind every number is a life.

”Unfinished Farewell” can be viewed at www.farewell.care and www.jiabaoli.org/covid19

References

1. Imbrizi and Lou. 2019. Interactive Particles. https://github.com/brunoimbrizi/interactive-particles.