Ossining Joins National Day Of Mourning For COVID-19 Victims

OSSINING, NY — Ossining village and town residents are invited to observe June 1 as a national Day of Mourning and Lament honoring the more than 100,000 Americans who died from COVID-19.

At 7 p.m. houses of worship throughout Ossining are invited to ring their bells, and residents are invited to light a candle, town and village officials said.

The idea came from a group of 100 national faith leaders — from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, representing major denominations, national faith-based organizations, local congregations, and millions of people of faith across the country. They touched base with the National Council of Churches, U.S. Conference of Mayors and National Governors Association, who have passed it on to their members and invited communities to take part.

"This unity across our faith lines and differences within our own traditions has been amazing to see and blessed to experience," said Jim Wallis of Sojourners, one of the organizers. "One hundred thousand neighbors, friends, and family — grandfathers and grandmothers, fathers and mothers, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, even children — are now all dead from COVID-19.

It is a marker we must not pass by quickly or easily. We must stop. We must weep. We must mourn. We must honor. And we must lament, which is to feel and bear great grief and sorrow, and reflect upon it."