I have a wife whose own health is less than perfect. We’ve worked out a mutual dependency. Suddenly, I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. Worse, I’m a threat, a carrier, a vector of night terrors.

The gift of this unpleasant infection has forced me to go past self-pity and weeping to a humbler understanding of myself and my place in a community. My weakness is my community’s strength. The less I am good for, the more magnificent my family and friends become. The house is full of food. My email is miles deep in attaboys and warm wishes. I ask for a blood-oxygen monitor; 30 minutes later, it’s on the porch. Doctors I’ve never met coach me through each step of the recovery. Readers who disagree with every word I write send assurance that they’re praying for me, and friends who don’t pray at all promise a double portion of whatever their strongest mojo might be.

The pandemic is helping us to see how our individual haint-filled nights are part of a larger life force. Health is not a purely individual concern. My helplessness in recovery can be precisely what the community needs: I am surviving the virus but not spreading it. Some of us are chosen to suffer, some to console; some to isolate, others to plunge into the fray; some to give, some to receive; some to be broken, others to be healers. We are still at the beginning of this terrible teaching. We need to respect it and give it the fullness of time. Weeping may tarry for the night.