Grief and Gratitude

I re-read all my New Year’s blog posts recently—7 years worth of them. I always do a recap of things I want to remember about the year—obsessively documented statistics about the number of books I’ve read (I did keep track, for the record! I read 59 this year -- 47 physical and 17 audio) and miles I’ve traveled and the sentimental images that will always pull me back to that specific time in my life. And I’ve tried to write it, over and over I’ve tried to write about 2020, but it’s felt impossible. How are you supposed to write about a year that felt like 20 years but also like such a haze that it might have been 20 seconds instead? What else can possibly be said about 2020 that hasn’t been said so many times already that it’s lost any potency? What can be said that isn’t depressing or trite? But here I am, still trying. 

There’s this steady refrain of guilt I feel at the ways in which 2020 was far less cruel to me than it has been to countless others, survivor’s guilt about near misses and silver linings. 2020 was the year I lost my grandma. Covid took away the last 3 months of her life that we could have visited her in the nursing home without a closed window between us, but at least the staff let us in for the last week and half of her life to tell her goodbye. 2020 was the year I lost Harry. Perhaps I’d never tried harder at anything than keeping that poor dog alive, and because of Covid, I wasn’t allowed in the veterinary hospital to be with him at the end. But at least I got to spend 2 months at home with him during quarantine that I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten, and at least the vet was willing to bring him to the door so I could tell him a last goodbye. At least, at least—these versions of consolation and reminders of gratitude play on loop. And to be clear—I DO feel grateful, immeasurably so, and a lot of 2020 was about recognizing that fear and grief don’t negate gratitude or joy. 

2020 for me was the Skull and Bones gang as the sun rose in the Treme on Mardi Gras morning. It was midnight tango dances until there was no one left to dance with. It was unreciprocated gifts and unanswered letters, extended hands pulled back again and again, broken promises and empty gestures, the sound of the rats in the walls at night before my apartment became habitable only by ghosts and monsters. It was fear and mental calculations and collective anxiety that made us feel better that at least we didn’t feel it alone. (At least.) It was the 3 months at my parents’ house, the outdoor funeral (at least we got to have a funeral, at least no one got sick afterward), the guitar I picked up from a stranger’s front porch and taught myself to play. The words I sang to no one. The bike rides through pot-holed streets, porch concerts, letters to and from strangers who were desperate to feel less alone. (Could there be a better city to live in during a pandemic? At least we got to be here where the musicians play on their balconies and raise their glasses to you as you bike past in the evening.) It was so, so many paranoia-induced Covid tests, and that moment of doubt after each negative result when I asked myself, “But how do I know it’s really negative?” It was a hundred thousand emails and zoom calls and “It’s not so much working from home as it is living at work.” And then there was August and new letters and tentative park visits, a new apartment with a balcony and an herb garden and fewer monsters. It was Michael surprising me with a new foster dog and the foster dogs who’ve let us borrow them ever since. It was reunions and reconnections with kindred spirits who felt like friends and with old friends who feel like new ones. It was levee paths to the end of the world and back. It was camping on mountainsides, apple-picking in valleys, fall leaves to make us forget the hardest parts of the year. It was hurricanes, swimming pools, s’mores in fireplaces, camping on my parents’ front porch, and election results on my birthday. It was Pudgy and Chewie wearing their winter sweaters at Christmas, a million meals cooked together, surprises, generosity, and learning how to trust kindness when it’s offered.

Words felt too slippery to hold onto, so I quit trying to trap them. Now they feel bottled and as restless as the rest of us. It’s been a long 4 years. It’s been a long year. It’s been a long January already. But look, we made it this far.