It’s funny how when Death comes knocking, time slides to a sludge. Despite the bright blue sky and the warm summer wind, there is a chill at your back, and something has grabbed you by your ankles, slowing you down.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled onto the fact that two older friends, with whom I had lost touch, had passed. One in December, the other in April, and I didn’t know until that Tuesday in July while I was looking for webinars to help me in September.
And that was just the beginning.
My mother-in law passed a week ago. For two weeks, our family has been wading through emotional sludge as we have taken steps to say goodbye. Covid took a back seat to a surreal season of grief.
All the while, famous folk passed away as well from John Lewis to Regis Philbin, Olivia De Havilland, Grant Imahara, Kelly Preston, and the list goes on.
But for us, Death had a more personal impact. It required that we travel out of state and stay in a hotel. We attended a wake, a church service, and ate a meal in a restaurant, all things that we have not done during the pandemic. Even though, I brought my own Clorox wipes, and four masks a piece for each of us for two days, and enough hand santizer to bathe in, Covid fears slid under my grief and greased my nerves with anxiety.
I watched the people around me and found myself backing into corners and offering elbows. I told our son, “Don’t hug anyone.” Our Covid precautions highlighted our otherness. A few understood. A few scoffed. I wanted to scold my husband for hugging family members, but how could I?
NJ is a great place to be these days when it comes to Covid 19. Each of the activities we had for the family member’s funeral would not happen the same way in NJ. The state we were in is not on NJ’s must quarantine list, but their rate of infection is higher.
We have decided to stay home this week and self-isolate. It is the responsible thing to do, because honestly, we did not adequately socially distant ourselves. We didn’t even know many of the people we were exposed to, so how would we know if they were Covid safe?
Never before has it been so clear to me that we need a National plan to deal with this pandemic. Local and state plans just aren’t good enough for the whole country. Not when we can travel readily from state to state. Not when some of our fellow citizens continue to believe that the pandemic is fake, or they don’t care about the others who live in their town.
We are all in this together. “United we stand. Divided we fall.”
Namaste
Meandering Through Midlife 
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