Thinking about Thanksgiving brings up happy memories of being back east with my family. Wine is poured, there’s the din of conversation and laughter, an obscene amount of food is paraded out and consumed, and I inevitably end up around the fire outside with my hilarious cousins.
I was sitting on the edge of my bed tugging on running socks in gloomy light last weekend when it finally sank in that this kind of Thanksgiving is not in the cards for me this year.
I’m not traveling, and even if I were I wouldn’t put my elderly family members at risk. On a normal year we’d at least have Friendsgiving, but I don’t see a path to making that happen either.
I sat there for a few moments letting this sink in. I felt so heavy, I considered not running. But I knew I’d feel worse if I stayed home so I got to my feet and out the door. I continued reflecting on where I am with the pandemic as I reluctantly started running.
I visited a store for a curbside pickup recently. The employee I chatted with outside gave me unsolicited advice: “Be cautious,” he said. “But don’t live in fear.”
I was wearing a mask. He wasn’t.
Then, an email. An acquaintance advised me to stay vigilant. “Be cautious,” he said. “Be careful with the virus and avoid infection.”
I watch people patronize our local coffee shop, maskless across from one another at a table, as though there isn’t a pandemic going on. I read the spikes in case counts in the paper, coupled with reduced hospital beds and ventilators. I see the posts on social media: “Don’t live in fear!”
I’m tired. And I’m quite sad, and staring down what feels like an endless winter that’s not punctuated by the usual bright spots: family, gatherings with friends, maybe travel here or there, holidays.
I don’t feel sorry for myself. Oddly, I feel profound gratitude. I am extraordinarily fortunate to have a loving family, incredible and understanding friends, a job and a place to comfortably socially distance. I am healthy. I don’t have small kids (a choice).
What I do feel is grief and loss.
Clearly, I feel loss around not being home for Thanksgiving. But I also feel it when I think of how many people’s lives this virus has impacted, and those whose lives it has taken. People who are sick, people who are long-haulers, people who may have spread it without knowing. Jobs lost. Entire livelihoods. I think of older people at higher risk of complications due to the virus, who also have fewer years left.
And people doing their absolute best throughout it all — I know their work is a bright spot, but I feel loss for them, too. People are putting heart, soul and countless hours away from their homes into trying to solve this crisis.
I feel loss around the politicization of mask-wearing, and how it’s hard for me to un-know something about people. I know the information around the spread of the virus has been confusing, but that’s because it’s new. If a mask helps people not get sick, or even if it possibly helps, why not try?
What’s the point of sitting here with this, though? A big part of me just wants to be happy. Be happy, my inner monologue snaps. Helpful, I snap back.
Yet even just writing this helps me, like pushing myself to go for the run.
I think this winter is going to be difficult. The dark days and hours stretch out ahead, without the usual bright pauses. That’s the truth of it, and it will feel terrible at points. I think it’s fair to be prepared for that.
Winter, like a pandemic, will happen day after day. Each day I’ll have choice. I can choose both to expect and feel grief and loss as they inevitably set in, and not to try to advise myself or anyone else out of that. Each of us has to take in the information we’re presented with and make the best decisions we can, for ourselves and our families.
I think it’s important to understand the difference between “living in fear” versus grieving something that is missing or lost. Just because grief is a negative emotion doesn’t make it any less real or present. I can’t wish the virus away. And, for me, living cautiously in order to mitigate my and others' risk is about facing reality, and making decisions to protect myself, my family and others in my community.
I can remind myself and those around me that this will end, and we will get through it together — even if we’re not physically together. I believe that. Someday we’ll look back on this. We just have to get there, as whole in body and mind as we can.
This winter is going to be day after day of reminding myself what I can do. A series of choices, one after another. The heaviness will probably feel heavier, but something in that act of pushing myself out the door to do the thing anyway is the best middle finger I know how to give the virus.
After all, there’s no coronavirus in Alaska’s open, uncrowded fresh air. When I run, I take care of my body. And as I get blood going, thoughts settle in better ways than when I’m stagnant and indoors. I can take my own advice out there, including acknowledging how I’m feeling, but also pushing forward one step at a time.
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