For Now

We’ve been in our house for one month and three days. Last week in New York, my aunt died. Somehow the days between learning she passed away and yesterday simultaneously feel like both years and minutes. It is a strange feeling to know someone you loved is simply gone. It seems the stages of grief from her death are mixed up with the stages of grief for the life we’ve lost. Sometimes, for a just a second, the grief overwhelms me. Mostly though, I’ve felt numb. I’ve been going about my days with extreme purpose or doing absolutely nothing. There hasn’t been much of an in-between. 

Yesterday I made the mistake of looking at our town’s very unhelpful Facebook page. A mistake because while I can’t control what people say on that page, I can avoid looking at it. I also can’t control the people who live in my town who feel they and/or their children have every right to play lacrosse and soccer or pickle ball or golf at closed facilities. 

“Leave them alone,” one woman dismissively wrote when someone voiced concern. Another noted that she’d seen the group of 15 or so kids playing lacrosse and soccer, that there’s enough room there on the (closed) turf, and they seemed to be “alone together.” All of emotion I’d swallowed after my aunt’s death came bubbling up to the surface. All of the ignorance and entitlement on display in that stupid social media post lit a spark of anger that smoldered all day. People are fighting for their lives and far too many are dying, but these folks feel they are somehow precluded from doing their part. That their lives are more important than the rest.

*I think I've reached the anger stage of my grief.

Toward evening, Dave and I stood in the quiet of our back yard after a walk in the bog behind our house. Just the two of us and Stella, enjoying the sun when two unknown dogs ran into our yard. They stood on our lawn, barking at us, as if we were the ones who didn’t belong. The owners nonchalantly strolled down the path that borders the  yards in our neighborhood, swinging a leash that should have been attached to the dogs, laughing. As they continued on their way down the trail toward the bog, oblivious to their intrusion, that smoldering spark started to burn a little hotter.

This morning I went to the grocery store, taking care to get there early to avoid lines to get inside. The mask I put on in the car had something fuzzy stuck to it. I discovered this in the produce section as maddening itch on my nose that I couldn’t deal with unless I touched my face. Struggling with the mask, I mistakenly went the wrong way down the new one-way aisle and was angrily informed of my mistake by an elderly man. His voice booming, he basically called me a fucking moron, his eyes blazing above his face mask. Maybe he’s been suffering through the last week as well. Maybe someone he loved died too. This is what I told myself. Maybe he’s also scared and struggling.

In the cereal aisle, I realized I forgot something back in produce. I stood there debating whether or not I wanted to bother going back. From the overhead speakers, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go was interrupted by an announcement. That ridiculously upbeat song from the 80’s in a nearly empty grocery store 30 miles outside of Boston, interrupted by a disembodied female voice citing the CDC’s distance requirements. This is reality for now.