All the Little Losses
Sunday, April 19, 2020
These are strange, strange times. I feel the urge, more than ever, to document and write what I’m seeing and what I’m feeling and, more simply, what is happening for the sake of posterity. And yet, I’m not. Not nearly as much as I want to, or should be. Part of that is old fashioned self sabotage—it seems that even a global pandemic can’t shake one’s ability to self loathe—and part of that is practical. As an employee at Whole Foods, I’m in one of the few industries still humming along—no, thriving—right now. So I go to work. I now wear a mask, get my temperature checked upon entry, and wash my hands until they are raw and red, and then some more. And while I’m there, the laundry piles up and Oryx and Crake remains unread. Things I have to do and things I want to do, remain undone. My kids notice my absences much more as they don’t have school to distract them. While they are at school, it doesn’t matter where I am, so long as I am home, or close to home, when they bound down the bus steps, Theo’s backpack straps falling off his arms. He is such an adorable mess after a day of school. Shoe laces untied, grass stains on his knees. But those days, for now, are no more.
When all of this began to really unfold, I wrote down, in the most mundane way, the accounts of the day, just to have a record of it. A timeline with details to try and capture the minutae of the overall feeling. Sophie had thrown up the night before from coughing so much. I go to bed early, I’m on my period, so I’m tired. We decide to keep all kids home on Thursday because there is so much uncertainty. The NBA suspends its season. We do over 100k in sales, a normal day is 60k. Certain shelves are sparse. Pasta. Toilet paper. I spend $200. It starts snowing. Big, fat flakes. It’s quite beautiful. If only anyone could get tested. I leave work a little bit early. Evelyn is still sick. It’s the first day of Spring. I bought some really good glazed chocolate donuts. I disinfect all the light switches and door handles and bathrooms. Things feel quiet and slow, like a false sense of security almost. I have no idea how long this will last.
I wanted to remember how it all happened. How, one day, the coronavirus was just a distant threat and then the next it turned up at our doorstep, or so we thought. In reality, by the time we noticed it here, it had already snuck into our bedrooms and then into our cells.
And since then, it has invaded every area of our lives. It has taken so much. It has robbed me of my trip to see my newest nephew. It has taken John Prine from my brother, who wrote a really beautiful tribute to him. It has, in some states and hopefully only temporarily, taken away the opportunity to vote. It has completely overshadowed the 2020 election. It has taken away any sense of normalcy, or at least, as much normalcy as can be allowed in the current era. Instead of socializing we are social distancing, a previously foreign term now ubiquitous in our society. And it has taken away our plans and ideas of what the future is supposed to hold. But in truth, we never did truly know what the future held. We just liked to think we did.
But still, an ode to the things we have lost. A nod to the things that no longer exist in these surreal days—to the hugs and handshakes, the birthday parties and wedding dress shopping. To the grandparents who will meet their fresh grand baby through a sliding glass door and to the exhausted new parents who will have to navigate early parenthood largely alone. To the students who no longer have school and the workers who no longer have their work (it’s estimated that roughly 22 million people have filed for unemployment since this crisis hit. ) To those souls who have been ripped of the decency and pain of holding and being held in death, and to the funerals that can’t happen. To the mothers and fathers, working and homeschooling, and to those that are alone in quarantine. To the coffee shops and local bookstores and my neighborhood salon, waiting patiently for our return.
And so, all of these seemingly little losses and devastatingly large ones alike, add up to a collective grieving that we are all experiencing right now, in different ways and to varying degrees. This manifests in tears and sore throats and feeling like we are floating, untethered to anything solid. It’s manifesting in frustration and rage and anger. And it’s ok, because these are not normal times.
There are, of course, other manifestations of everything we are experiencing and feeling. There are the Italians singing from their balconies and the New Yorkers clanging pots and pans from their balconies at 7pm each night as the medical staff swift shifts. There is art being made and homemade meals are being cooked. Zooming has become a verb akin to googling. Books are being read and someone somewhere is re-watching Sally Field get so brilliantly angry when Shelby dies in Steel Magnolias.
I am telling myself to allow myself the room to feel what I feel. To give the rage room to breathe and the exhaustion room to rest. Because, like happiness, they too will pass.
