Life in the (Widow) Hood: One Year Later

Anniversaries live in our bones. We have muscle memory that reminds us that they are upon us even if we have neglected to note it on the calendar. I know, for instance, that every year around this time I start to feel a tightness in my chest and a sadness, for it’s the anniversary of my infant son Ari’s birth and death, five days apart from each other. And while I had thought, all those years ago, that the experience would become merely a part of my past, it’s very much a present story, one that colors my life to this day with perhaps even more meaning than I initially understood 23 years ago. For the grief I experienced over those five short days, and for the past 23 years, has taken up residence in my body, welcoming the newer losses as they accrue and alchemizing them into the strength and wisdom I need to keep moving forward.

Grief is a powerful tool. It guts us and it changes us. We try to run from it, tamp it down, ignore it, wash it away with addictive substances, or work, or food, or any number of numbing proposals. But grief doesn’t work that way – it reminds me of the book I used to read to my children when they were little about a bear hunt. The family is off  to find a bear, but around every corner they encounter an obstacle, whether it’s a river, or mud, or something else they need to forge to continue on their hunt. And at the start of each obstacle, they announce “Oh, no, mud! Thick, oozy mud. We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. Oh no! We have to go through it!”

And that’s the way it is with grief. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We just have to wade through it.

Just about one year ago, our lives were overtaken by a global pandemic. We were shut down, almost overnight. Locked in, suddenly we couldn’t leave our homes, we were facing shortages of the most basic things, like toilet paper, and those who were lucky enough to have the access  had to learn to shift everything about our lives online. People started dying in horrific numbers, and we had no idea where the disease lay, or how we might contract it. Everything looked like a sinister disease-carrier, from the handrail on the metro to the gas pump to the grocery store door handle. We were told not to wear masks, as essential workers needed them, but soon learned that masks were in fact our best defense against the deadly pathogen. Confusing messages, disinformation and chaotic news assaulted our senses on an hourly basis. We could no longer see our families or friends, let alone touch them. Everything we knew to be true was no longer so. And we had no sense of when this new upside down, dystopic life might shift back to something we recognized as normal.

Each of us has a different date coming up in March that marks the year since we had that moment, realizing that our life had just changed at the snap of a finger. Mine is March 11 – I had lunch with a colleague who is also a friend, who laughed when we hugged hello and told me that she had friends who were already choosing not to go out to lunch. As we sat at the table, I started to wonder if it was safe to touch the menu, the napkin, the food. I went home and didn’t leave my house again, except to walk the dog, for a long time.