Chronicling the Days – Robert Edison Sandiford

In April 2020, we invited writers in Quebec to submit a story of a single day during the strange, uneasy time of coronavirus and pandemic, of social distancing and self isolation, of lockdown and quarantine.

We’re thrilled to announce that these stories have been gathered in Chronicling the Days: Dispatches from a Pandemic (Guernica Press). To learn more and buy the book, please visit https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771836579.

Please also join us on the QWF FB Community page, and let the authors know if their words resonated.

This piece is by Robert Edison Sandiford, writing on March 18, 2020.

“How does a culture withstand the onslaught of a pandemic? We survive first of all with the presence of culture within us. It is to our inner culture that we turn, the culture we carry in us through years of unconscious osmosis and conscious acquisition.” Ben Okri

My 13-year-old daughter is afraid to die.  Some days, it’s an abstract fear: the thought of not being here, of being nothing, is an unfathomable void.   There are days—today—it is COVID-19.  

To read the rest of the story, please support our community and check out Chronicling the Days: Dispatches from a Pandemic