The other night, after Khalil had gone to bed, I started thinking about the 323,000 Americans who have died from Covid-19 this year. According to mortality data, 3,000,000 people have died in the US in 2020, which is 400,000 more than in 2019. The last time death rates rose like this was over 100 years ago, during the 1918 flu pandemic. Every day, 3000 families are losing a loved one.
David came in and I asked, crying, “How will we all recover from these losses? How can the world ever be ok again?” We are in the middle of a worldwide mass casualty event and, if we are doing our part to stop the spread of Covid, we are enduring this trauma isolated from many of the people we love.
Every person reading this is living through a hard season during a painful year and still, we wake each day and do our best. We are honoring and adjusting holiday traditions. We are reaching out, virtually, to family and friends. We are baking cookies, watching favorite movies, and singing carols. We are holding tightly to the moments of joy.
Yesterday, my friend Alycia shared a recording of herself singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and I put in my headphones and listened 5 times in a row, letting myself weep for all that we’ve lost this year. The lyrics echo the sentiments of Christmas 2020.
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
There are two poems that I’ve been reading as I reflect on the immense pain in the world right now. One is Mary Oliver’s “Love Sorrow.” It reminds me that we must hold our sorrow gently and lovingly. Failing to acknowledge and feel the pain of the moment is dangerous and, as Oliver warns, if we lose track of our grief, we may “become sorrow” ourselves.
Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,
what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so
utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment
by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,
as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.
Another poem that brings me hope right now is “Before You Know Kindness” by Naomi Shiab Nye. Nye reminds us that the outcome of loss and pain can be a true and transformative kindness. A kindness that emerges from deep sorrow is, as Nye says, the “only kindness that makes sense anymore.”
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
May we all enter 2021 humbled and determined, muddling through as best we can. As the veil of loss begins to lift in 2021, thanks to the tireless work of scientists, may we practice the “tender gravity of kindness” that can grow from a pain like this.
Happy Holidays from our home to yours. Wishing you moments of peace over these weeks. I love you.
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more