We’re not quite out of it yet, but we can see the end of it from here. That’s how I feel about both this year, and the pandemic.
Vaccines are here, medical personnel are getting them, nursing home residents will soon follow. By May, they say, most of the country will have been vaccinated. And yet, there are still more than 3,000 dying every day. I used to dream about them, at the beginning of the pandemic. For weeks I had nightmares of the dying. I wasn’t alone. Many people were having them. Psychologists said it was repressed fear coming out in our sleeps. To me, it fielt like more than that. A portend of what was happening and more to come.
This year I learned how important travel and freedom of movement are to me, and I sacrificed those loves for my life and the lives of other. It angered me when other people didn’t do the same. I struggled with martyr syndrome. I struggled with wanting to book a flight out of the country and gambling that I would stay well, wouldn’t get sick, and wouldn’t die. I struggled with staying put, and staying home.
A friend and her entire family caught Covid over Thanksgiving. She called it a “chicken pox party.” said it wasn’t nearly as bad as the media made it out to be. I texted back, “For 96% of the people it isn’t.” I’m not sure what the death rate is now, somewhere around 1%, but if you include the people who get very ill from it, it’s more along the lines of 3-4% who stare death in the face.
When my parents would pressure me to join in all the family reindeer games, I would say, “I don’t want to get sick. I’m not going to get sick.” And I haven’t, and I pray that I don’t. Not because I am truly afraid I will die from it, but because I am afraid it won’t die with me, that it will take someone else out, and I will have been it’s murderous accomplice.
My mom told me, on Christmas, all the names of people in town she knows who have gotten it and spread it to at least once other (usually, their spouse). Some have thought they had “just a cold” when it was IT, not just any cold. We live in an age when colds are suspicious. But do you really just have a cold? Where did that cold come from?
From now on, I hope, getting other people sick from colds and flu will be a much bigger taboo than it used to be.. We will likely pass 1,000 deaths in Montana alone by the end of the year. If we have roughly one million residents, that’s .01% of the population. Those numbers though, they don’t tell the story of who those people were, who they were important to, and what roles they played in their community. They don’t show the ripple effect of loss.
What this year has shown me is who is selfish, and who is not. Who reaches for denial in the first step of the grieving process, and who reaches for anger, and who reaches for sadness. It’s shown me that America is resilient. Our political systems held in an election tested like no other. Our hospitals have withstood being overcrowded with critically ill patients. Our cities withstood protests that sometimes escalated into violence. Our society has self-reflected and changed (though not nearly enough) when faced with the ugliness of systemic racism.
And yet, it feels like we’re all still barely holding on by a thread heading into this New Year. That’s the thread I hope remains in 2021 and is knit back into the sweater of our democracy to hold us all together again. Never did I imagine thet the country’s roots of Civl War would start to show again, that we would need an appointment to repair our country’s highlights at the world salon. Oh, but we do.
My hope is also that we learned what and who is truly important to us during this pandemic, and we don’t waste any more time on the things that aren’t important.. Democracy is important. Institutions are important. The free press is important. Science is important. Education is important. Faith is important. Culture is important. Good government is important. Cross-cultural exchange is important. People who are there for you during a pandemic … important. People who are not … not important.
I could go on.
You decide what’s important to you, and fight for it in 2021. Hold on to it. Tell it to be smart, and be safe and do things one day at a time. Tell it you love it when you love it, and you don’t when you don’t. Show it that you care by giving it time, attention, and money. Forgive it when it doesn’t hold up the way you thought it should. Put it in a place of honor and respect. Try your hardest to keep it. Let it go if it needs freedom. You decide.