Pamela Addison never expected to be a widow at 36. Just two years ago, she held her six-month -old son and two-year old daughter and watched helplessly as paramedics rushed her husband Martin to the hospital. It was the last time Pamela would see her husband alive. Martin Addison died 26 days later of COVID-19. It was a devastatingly frightening time for young mom.
But then she received a sympathy card from another young widow whose husband had died of the virus just a few weeks before. “You’re not alone,” the card read.
Pamela was soon in contact with the card’s sender, Kristina Scorpo. The two now single moms launched a Facebook support group, Young Widow and Widowers of COVID-19, for women and men like them struggling as single parents in the isolation brought on by the pandemic. The group has more than 400 members across the country and the United Kingdom.
“We didn’t plan on this,” Kristina says. “We didn’t plan to be widowed at 36 or 33. We didn’t plan to raise our kids without our partners that we saw our lives with and we saw a future with.”
The members of the group are especially welcoming to those who have just lost their husbands or wives., “when it feels hopeless, like there isn’t going to be happiness again or joy,” Pamela explains. “I feel like we can help them. Even if they’re not where I am now, I can support them. And that’s healing for me, too.”
What these two women did was the work that all of us are challenged to do as disciples. In the words of kindness that we offer others, in words of encouragement and comfort, in time spent in listening and supporting another, we proclaim the Easter message, we live the Gospel message of compassion, mercy, and reconciliation.
As Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel, unfortunately many people prefer the darkness to the light. As someone once said “it is not that people are coerced into doing evil things, it is rather that evil is made attractive.”
Every good work that we do, however small, is a spark of the light of the risen Lord.
Image: “I Live By Light” by A_Peach is licensed under CC BY 2.0.