One year
March 13, 2021
"The grim realities of covid19 are settling in, and with them, no shortage of anxiety," I wrote in my journal a year ago. I read those words now, and I wonder: what in particular was happening, just then? I remember some of the anxiety I felt. My son's school had just closed down, and I knew that I didn't / couldn't know what was coming. But of what "grim realities" was I really aware, a year ago? The horror stories from the NYC ICUs hadn't happened yet, then. So much hadn't happened yet, then.
A year ago at this season some people were beginning to predict that 100,000 Americans might die from the virus. I'm pretty sure that prospect seemed horrifying. I don't know how to process the fact that after a year, the reality is half a million souls here so far, and 2.64 million worldwide. I also couldn't have imagined, last spring, that some people would call the virus a hoax, or cry "personal freedom" and refuse masks -- that so many would shrug off our human responsibility to protect others.
I know how fortunate I am: I haven't gotten sick, and neither has anyone in my close sphere. I have a job, and a roof over my head. I'm not food-insecure. For that matter, I like to cook, so the fact that I've made almost all of the meals I've eaten over the last year is not a hardship. My fifth grader has weathered the challenges of Zoom school and hybrid school and being apart from his friends and family as well as any child I can imagine. We're fine...and we're also not fine; no one is really fine.
It's been a year of a lot of pastoral listening: sometimes trying to offer comfort, and sometimes just sitting with people in the low or frightened or anxious or despairing place where we are. It's been a year of learning how to lead services on Zoom, how to facilitate spiritual experience from afar. It's been a year of contactless grocery pickup and staying apart and washing masks. It's been a year of loneliness and solitude and grief and losses -- so many losses, even for those of us who've made it through.
I think it will likely take years for the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to be known. How will this year have shaped us: the loneliness, the loss, the grief -- the science denialism and politicization of masks -- and also the unexpected moments of connection or kindness against the backdrop of so much trauma? Those of us who have made it through will be changed by what this last year has held. I want to believe that we can harness those changes for the good of each other, but I don't know how.