An Anniversary
This is something I don’t really want to talk about, but I think I have to. When I am done, I hope I can put it away. Not in a hidden place, but in a “dealt with” place.
One year ago this week, my 9 year old looked up at me from where he was sitting at the kitchen table and said “I feel like I am made of damaged pipe, and all I can feel are my bones”.
Despite being proud of his description, it made my heart sink. Two nights before, my husband suffered through sweats and chills, and since that night had been sick in bed. He had also come up to me in the kitchen and reported that he couldn’t smell or taste. I forced things under his nose, trying to get him to smell anything; I didn’t want to believe that sense was totally gone. If I could find something he could smell, it wouldn’t be what I was dreading. He half-heartedly thought that maybe he could smell something and it made me feel 1% better. I called my boss and told him my husband and son both had fevers and that I would probably be next. By the end of the day, I too had a low grade fever and had to lay down.
As parents, we tried to hold it together and not let our worry make it worse for son. I found I am not good at not worrying. I took temperatures obsessively, either with a thermometer or sly kisses on the forehead. My son was lethargic most of the first day, but by the afternoon stated that at least he could feel his skin again, so things were looking up. By the next day, my son reported he was about 90% better and was acting like his usual self. My husband and I swung back and forth from feeling better to needing to lie down. After eating something, my husband would sleep for hours. I busied myself around the house, cleaning closets and baseboards. I fretted over my family. Was it a run of the mill flu, or something else?
We scheduled a test and a few days later, the confirmation came back at 2:00 am. We got the call and spent the rest of the night pacing back and forth, wondering how this had happened and what was going to come next.
We got our letters; we were forbidden to leave the property. I hadn’t waited for contact tracers - I called everyone I had come into contact with when my husband first got sick, then when I got sick, then a third time when the test came back positive. Forget a literal virus, I was sick with worry that I had passed it along, although thankfully not one of our close contacts (or their contacts) would contract it.
What would come next was another week of ups and downs. At times both of us felt like we were on the upswing, then the next day we were back down. We both had spurts of energy, then needed to rest. We massaged our aching backs and downloaded DoorDash for the first time. My 41st birthday came and went, a bummer if ever there was one, but there were porch presents from kind friends.
After 36 hours, my son was totally back to normal and after two weeks, my husband and I were better. If I am honest, it was not the worst sick we have ever been. Our fevers were always low, we never had trouble breathing and we didn’t need much medication (I didn’t take any at all). I had not lost my taste and smell either, although I say it “flickered”; maybe that’s because, in my panic, I about burned the inside of my nose off with Thieves Oil. Once my husband commented that my dinner smelled delicious, we realized he was back to his old self, too.
The worst was the fear of the unknown - I was pretty confident my son would be ok, but my husband had a stroke 10 years ago, is older and has high blood-pressure; was he going to be ok? I am younger and healthy but still - there isn’t always an apparent rhyme or reason to who gets hospitalized; would I be ok? And what would be the ripple effect? I was not ok until it had been two weeks and no one else got sick.
As I write this I remember being so scared and sad, but I also feel so grateful - we were taken care of, and still are.
When I set out to write this, it was to talk about the grief I have experienced over the last year. I work in funeral homes; I see sickness and death in all places and all ages. You would think I would realize my family was mortal. Logically knowing this and anxiety over illness are two different things. I have to say goodbye to the me that saw sickness as merely an irritant. The me after COVID-19 came to live on the planet is anxious about illness. I stock pile vitamins and follow any rabbit hole that promises any protection against getting sick again.
I was not initially fond of new, anxious me. I miss the me that used to eat food off the floor and hated hand sanitizer. I miss the me that thought I lived in a world I mostly understood. How lucky we were, and how much we took for granted.
Although I grieve for the me of 0-40, the me of now is a survivor and a thriver and has things to say. I plan to continue to survive and thrive, if it’s meant to be.
What the me has now that makes me better than who I was before, is perspective. I suggest we all might be better today than we were in 2019, if we took our lessons and lumps and figured out what to do with them, or are in the process of trying.
It was a death that occurred, make no mistake. Whether you got sick or not, a cycle has ended…or is in the process of ending anyway, and now we are in-between. What happens next has to do with the choices we make now.
I will not tell you what choices to make. There are many choices, and I happen to think even ones I didn’t make can be good ones.
Here are some choices that I made:
I found my family. That first night in bed when I was the sickest I would be, the women in my family came to me in my sleep. They sat around me, talking in whispers but congenially. They weren’t anxious, they were content to spend the evening with me and with each other. They crocheted, a talent that has been passed down for generations, and I felt them crocheting the virus out of my body. I asked for them to do the same for my husband and son. They shushed me and I dozed in and out, but I knew they were working and that they would take care of us.
The bond I created with my family through the use of an Ancestor altar, and the willingness to believe that such a bond could exist, is hands down the best addition to my life.
I am making a conscious decision to listen and support indigenous cultures. They know more about the Earth than we do; it is a shame we have minimized them.
As a Catholic, then atheist, then agnostic, then spiritual-but-not-religous and now Orisa devotee, I am finding it more comfortable to pray and am finding a practice that works for me.
I am careful with my time and tend more to my home and garden. Up until 40 I had intense FOMO. Now, I preach JOMO with all my heart! (*Fear of Missing Out vs. JOY of Missing Out)
I am working on listening with my heart, to others but also to myself. I have always looked for my validation externally. That did not give me an opportunity to practice using my own intuition.
I will continue to move purposefully towards work that fulfills my soul. It may or may not result in income, but it will result in me dying without regret.
My time and money is best spent on ways to stay healthy. Health to me looks like strength and cardio training, breathwork, meditation, time in the sun, rest, and paying attention to what I consume (consume can be food or social media!)
And finally - a commitment to writing. A blog is a funny thing, it almost feels silly to have one with everyone else and their mom, but it makes me feel better. Writing this made me feel better. If it makes one other person feel better, that’s good too.
So, on this one year anniversary, can I finally put my experience away in a “dealt with” place? Yes and no. I will put this blog on the metaphorical shelf and see what happens. It will always be there, and I assume thoughts of last September will bubble up at times, but I am at peace. I’ll tell you, I feel better now than when I typed that first sentence. I have defined my tools, including ways to reduce my anxiety, so unless I want to keep moving in circles, the best thing for me to do is move on. I will surrender to what is, and equip myself for whatever future comes next.
Is there anything you need to revisit so you can put it on the shelf and move forward? It doesn’t mean it goes away, it just isn’t all-consuming. If so, give it a try. I promise that by doing the work, and acknowledging the close of a cycle, you are readying yourself to move on to the next.
