This and that

There must be at least 7,000 households in Wake Forest. The two mayors, Vivian Jones of Wake Forest and John Bryne of Fuquay-Varina are tied at 71 percent of their respective households who have responded to the 2020 Census, but Jones just reported that Bryne leads by 0.01 percent.

We can’t have that, so all of you who have been procrastinating, you in those 2,100 households who need to go to a computer and find www.2020census.gov better get a shake on. Otherwise the mayor will be wearing a F-V cap and hosting John for lunch.

And otherwise Wake Forest, Wake County and North Carolina will not get their fair share of the federal money for schools, colleges, roads and all the other things that get all or part of their money from the feds.

* * * *

I cannot really comprehend 100,000 deaths, 100,000 dead people. It is just too much. To think about the deaths across the country, to think about the deaths in North Carolina is too much. I might be able to visualize the 33 deaths in Wake County.

I can do it by killing off my family in my mind and I’ll add myself. So it starts with me and my husband, John, and then our three children, Randy, Peter and Mary. Add in our grandchildren, Dylan and Layla, and you get to seven. My brother, Gary, makes eight, and then I can add our parents, Marion and Earl, and laughing Wayne, who died at 9 months of pneumonia. I won’t add the little boy dead at birth. The count is now 11.

There is more on the other side of the family, starting with John’s brother and sisters, Paul, Dorothy and Nadine, 14, and their parents, Anthony and Gladys Belle, 16. Dorothy had one son, Kurt, and Nadine had one daughter, Debbie, 18.

Paul and his wife, Pat, had five children, Nina, Tony, Dominick, Angela and Camille, 24.

In turn, they produced 10 grandchildren, Keaton, Devan, Tory, Tessa, Matthew, Isabella, Ezalinda, Jamie, Vincent and Sabrina, and we are at 34, one more than Wake’s count.

But I’ve mentally slaughtered many still alive and restored to life many long dead, four generations of my close family. It is shattering to contemplate.

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