President Biden and Vice President Harris acknowledged a grim milestone Monday: the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans from COVID-19.
Biden and Harris, along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, emerged from the White House at sundown. They stood at the foot of the South Portico, covered in 500 candles honoring the dead, and listened to a Marine Corps band play "Amazing Grace" as they held a moment of silence.
Before the brief ceremony, Biden spoke, emotionally and somberly, from the White House. As he often does in moments of tragedy, Biden spoke directly to people who have lost friends and family members. "I know all too well," Biden said, "that black hole in your chest. You feel like you're being sucked into it. The survivor's remorse. The anger. The questions of faith in your soul."
Biden's first wife and first daughter were killed in a car crash shortly before he was sworn in as a U.S. senator. His son Beau died from brain cancer when Biden was vice president.
While President Donald Trump repeatedly downplayed and sought to minimize the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden is pushing Americans to acknowledge and directly confront the enormity of the loss that the country has experienced over the past year, even if that action brings pain.
"We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur," he said Monday, in the second ceremony he has held to honor people killed in the ongoing pandemic.
"To heal, we must remember. It's hard, sometimes, to remember," Biden said on the eve of his inauguration in a similar ceremony at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. At that time, the U.S. had just marked 400,000 COVID-19 deaths. Remembering, he said, is "how we heal. It's important to do that as a nation."