Hope Dies Last
Flower, my Russian friend, has many pithy sayings but one of my favorites is “Hope dies last.” This has been a reminder during my darkest hours that to give up hope is the equivalent of annihilation. So I always go through my list and at the bottom is this: I hope I don’t give up hope.
On Friday, March 13, I decided to not send Tin to school. At that time, I had been sick for two and a half months and frankly didn’t want him to go to that petri dish of an institution and bring home yet another germ. I wasn’t really thinking broadly about coronavirus, COVID-19 or a pandemic. Instead, we went for a walk to the beach with Stella and both he and the dog went into the water, while I found an Adirondack chair to flop down in and let out a big deep breath.
As I sat there, a few things happened: I didn’t feel the need to get up, I watched Tin and Stella splashing in the water with a smile on my face, I thought about this coronavirus, and I got sunburned. I credit that sun absorption with my turning a corner on my own illness. A heavy dose of Vitamin D coursed through me that I’m sure had a big influence on my recovery.
I also credit that day with my coming to terms with the coronavirus being a pandemic. I had a definite understanding right then that social isolation was not only imminent but also necessary. I worried about Tin in New Orleans the next week and came home and sent an email that spoke plainly about my concerns – I’m over 60, with an auto immune, and have been sick for two and a half months so I’m vulnerable and don’t think he should go to school, go to his annual check up with his doctor, or for that matter be around anyone.
On Sunday, however, I came back from dropping him in New Orleans, and went to my neighbors’ house for hamburgers. There were nine of us sitting around the table in the carport. The entire conversation was about the coronavirus, so much so, that by the time I went home, I was more seriously going down the rabbit hole of the rules of engagement for a pandemic.
On Monday, I was to be on two television programs about the St. Joseph altar that would be at the Hall on Thursday. The TV stations told me not to come and said they had cancelled all in studio interviews. We had modified the event to have the doors open with air circulating, to-go bags of cookies and to-go cartons so folks could take their food rather than eat together in community. But by Tuesday, we had cancelled the altar, the Arts Alive festival after party for Saturday, and pretty much everything else went on lockdown.
Then it was April 12th and all the thought pieces on COVID-19 are that it is here to stay and either some of us develop immunity, a vaccine is made, or pretty much we can expect huge numbers of deaths and one area in particular is on everyone’s radar – New Orleans – whose numbers are spiking exponentially on a daily basis.
My year had already started off rocky. I had caught my first bug at my great niece’s bat mitzvah in Houston on January 3rd. The two revenue-producing jobs I was seeking hard evaporated before they even materialized. While the Hall had upcoming events that were to help pay for more events at the Hall, it did little to put food on my table or gas in my car. And now not only was there not going to be any revenue in my personal life, or for the Hall now that all events are cancelled indefinitely, but my dwindling 401K I was going to use to thread my way to being able to collect social security had been greatly diminished by the market crash.
Lions and Tigers and Bears – oh my.
As I’ve moved in and out of a paralysis that seems to shut me down in mid thought, I am fascinated by just how much I am not freaking out right now. I don’t feel hopeless, albeit I lack any desire to address this crisis like I have all the crises in the past where I’ve reinvented myself, taken risks, worked my fingers to the bone and drew blood from the proverbial turnip. This time, I feel like I’m floating on a feather hammock – I know it can’t support me – but if I don’t move then just maybe … .
And to be clear my hope remains in the unknown that this pandemic will change us all and change my child because we need to change. That a big pause in consumption means a big pause in pollution. That a big pause in mobility means a big pause for the environment. That a big pause in the absurdity which had become my life – driving two to four hours a day to bring my son to a school I knew was underserving him because I was held hostage in a system that didn’t support us – would give me time to help my son get his bearing now to be able to move up.
This big pause I set my hope on might be what our world needs to correct course. That is what the crises in my life have brought me – a redirection – except this time it is a global pandemic so the gasps, grinding, and gumption is coming from all of us everywhere rather than just inside my tiny being. In this I am not alone and that gives me hope.
Even having glimpsed hope in the ruins is a miracle. In years past, in struggles past, I have always resisted the crisis. I would try, white knuckled, to hold onto the old way even as the new way eclipsed it. Noooooooooo, my mind and body would shout. Please, no change, noooooo, I don’t like it. Then as the crises began to stack, I realized the noooooo was when the suffering appeared.
The admonition to go with the flow that so easily rolls off my tongue when my son is having a hissy fit just didn’t present itself to me for the big flow of life. The big flow begs us to follow not lead – so what if everything we know is changing so we have to let go of every thing that brings us comfort – money in the bank, bills paid on time, house security, food security, toilet paper security and of course, plans and goals?
How will we measure how we are doing if we don’t have currency? How will we know we accomplished anything if we don’t have benchmarks? What if Donald Trump is the president who flips the U.S. democracy to socialism because he has no choice? How will children play together? How will we unwire our brains for distance? How does hope play out when we don’t even know what we are supposed to hope for in the end?
