It's Over

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 It's over. I can't believe it. I just ... it's over. I can't believe it. It is over.

It's been a very long five years.

Yes, five years. Because this stain has occupied too much space in my mind for much longer than his presidency.

But now it's over. And there are those who would poo-poo this moment because they think "both parties" are bad and neither have anything to offer anyone.

Well, I'm not them and I am celebrating. I'm celebrating quietly, but still celebrating, nonetheless.

Cheers to it being over.

Pandemic

It's been almost a year since the world first heard of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus causing COVID-19. When I first heard of it, I really thought it was nothing more than a minor headline that would pass into nothingness before long.

I grew up hearing about mad cow disease. MERS, the first SARS, West Nile virus, and the ebolavirus outbreak of a few years ago all happened since I became a nurse. I worked through H1N1 and learned about Zika. I knew epidemiologists have been been warning about a global pandemic for - well, forever. But none of them had developed into that. This was probably the same kind of thing.

I did not believe it would turn into a thing I needed to worry about.

I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

Within a week, public schools closed along with restaurants and the more "frivolous" retail services closed. People started wearing masks and stocking up on toilet paper. There was no hand sanitizer to be found any where. Concerts were canceled for the next month, and then for the next year.

I became mortally afraid for my grandparents and parents. Afraid for myself and my household, though a little less so, since we're all relatively young and pretty healthy.

And then I started hearing about relatively young and pretty healthy people becoming deathly ill. ICU stays and residual side effects. Mounting hospital debt and the long haulers.

I listened to podcasts wherein people described the loss and pain COVID-19 had brought into their lives. I cried on the way to work. I cried at work and at home. I cried and I cried about everything.

Facing the mortality of the human race heightened every emotion I could experience, both good and bad. So I cried over everything

I feel both closer to and more distant from the whole of humanity.

We are all experiencing the same thing right now. Some of us believe it's a hoax or blown out of proportion. Others are taking it seriously and believing science is doing its level best with the hand we've been dealt. No matter where one stands on that spectrum, it is what we are dealing with now.

So, while we stay in our homes and miss concerts and street festivals and museums, we can relate to one another in a way we might not have before.

I meant to keep up a journal about this thing. But this thing became so disheartening and so heavy that I stopped journaling about it. It all became too much to think about and I moved into more of a keep-your-head-down-and-put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-just-keep-moving mode. So I have no journal and no real documentation of what's happened.

I do have many thoughts about what's happened and continues to happen. Those will come out here as they come to my mind and as I have time to sit down and put them into my keyboard.

...

I haven't been here in a while. Quite a long while.

A long, long while.

How long, exactly, is a "while?"

However long a "while" is, I'm pretty sure I have not been here in many whiles.

Things happened. Life, I guess, is what happened. Life is what happens when you're making other plans, as a popular song says.

I moved houses -- a couple of times.

I bought a house -- with another person. He's pretty great, this person.

Susie, the Stupendous Subaru, died. I had to get a Toyota. She's alright, I guess; we're getting to know each other, I guess.

I left nursing, got a new job. I'm officially a lab nerd. It's kind of always been the dream job I didn't know existed, but was in the back of my head all the time. I'm okay at it and I'm trying to get better.

My kids grew up. Two of them are voting (!) adults with jobs and they're contributing to society. The third is a high school senior.

Somehow he's the third of my kids to become a high school senior and I'm still ... not believing it? How does that even happen?

I mean, I've watched it happen a couple of times already and I'm still, like, uh ... could you do that again, please? I didn't quite, uh, catch what you were doing there with that sleight of hand and all, so could you do it again? Just once more? You know, without the flashes and the spangles and the jazz hands? And maybe could you let me watch it in slow motion? That might help. Maybe?

But, no. 

No one replays these magnificent and humble moments for me. No one humors me, lets me savor the moments for a bit longer, or see them one more time.

I can't blame anyone. This is not a thing to be redone. There is no malice. It is just the way things are. 

Jazz band and marching band and tennis matches and report cards and final exams.

Homecoming dances and prom dances with dates and with best friends.

AP classes and college credits and chosen electives to match hoped-for careers.

Ordering graduation announcements and class rings and letter jackets.

Final sports and music celebratory banquets.

Ceremonies in Magnus Arena.

It is the period at the end of a movement of life. This is not a coda; there is no repetition now. The repetition might have happened when one of them were a freshman, sophomore, junior.

But no more.

Here we are.

I did not know where this post was going when I started typing. But here we are.

Here we are in the middle of a pandemic. More on that next time.