It’s taken months for me to come to a place where I could tell this story. I didn’t expect today the day to be the day I found my voice. To find my way home, but here I am.
This weekend marks the last time I felt like the me I remember. Various family members had been sick with all kinds of crud for the preceding week. Any minor discomforts I had was shrugged off and attributed to intensified workouts. I am a push through and persevere kind of person. I thought I was doing quite well, and I remember entertaining my young niece overnight. I took her around to various attractions and pulled out all the stops back at the house. I tried for the kind of over the top weekend of love and spoiling I want her to remember in the years to come, just as I remember the love and comfort my own aunts lavished upon me. By Monday, abdominal pains set in with no respite for a couple of weeks. I would successfully mask those pains and a raging migraine for the next week or two until they subsided. A month later, I would push through an evening 3 miler, feel triumphant and good enough; that night, I would wake up with my heart pounding and struggling to get a breath.
In between the two events, the world had exploded and shut down. Covid had come to call.
A call to my brand new to me doctor, whom I had met a month earlier, yielded a glib pronouncement of acid reflux and an advisement to eat a low fat diet, get some exercise, take a pill, and watch my stress levels. None of these suggestions were adequate. I asked for one of the almost nonexistent Covid tests. It took me weeks to get one. It was negative. For the next two months, it was as if my body had gone haywire. I know of no way to explain this to someone who has not lived it. The complete unreliability of my body was overwhelming. I finally got an antibody test. I had none.
Once, I ran 10 miler without stopping. Another time, I registered and completed a ½ marathon on short notice. I have a black belt. Now, I struggled to walk a mile. Like breadcrumbs on a trail, I would spend the next 15 months sorting out ways to find my way back to a healthier version of myself. I became a compulsive reader and self experimenter. I cobbled together data that would help shift me into something enough like a reasonably heathy person that my new to me cardiologist allowed that perhaps he’d been too hasty to write off my plight as that of a middle aged woman wrought with too much news anxiety, and perhaps there was still much for doctors to discover about this new virus. I cannot overstate how grateful I was. How it felt to finally exhale. How it wasn’t enough to cut through the noise when a family member announced in the hearing of my child that I had become a hypochondriac. How it wasn’t enough to stop the anger that was emerging as the shell of my new self emerged. And I was angry. So angry. At 10 months out. At 15 months out. Even at 20 months. I remember confiding in someone that I was struggling with anger, and they challenged me. Why should I be angry? To whom was my anger directed? That was easy. I was angry at those who downplayed the virus. I was angry at those who mocked mask wearers. Who said the virus couldn’t kill you. Or could only kill the weak. I helped bury a love one from Covid. I guess they were weak, let me tell you, it was no consolation. I watched what felt like everyone go back to their old lives. They ate and drank whatever they liked. I was angry *and* envious. Those days were long gone. I watched church after church person announce that precautions were giving into fear and thus one step towards Satan. I bristled with every buoyant person who wrote it all off as bunk and cavalierly shared germs. I was also angry at me. Really though, I was just angry. Why me? Maybe I was being punished for not being giving enough when my family needed me. Maybe it was the sins of my youth catching up to me. Maybe, maybe, maybe. They nagged at me all the time.
Somewhere in all this, was the growing knowledge that I don’t want to be defined by my anger, just as I do not want to be defined by sickness. I still desire to be an unstoppable, workhorse with a soft spot for G-d, children, animals, and my fellow fringe dwellers. Yet, here I was.
Last Easter, I finally made it back to church. I found one with an outdoor service, because that’s where I was still at. I wept with the impossible hope of it all. It was a while before I made it back again. This fall, I went to visit a dear friend back from one of our many stops. For different reasons, she was also at an in between place. Sunday came, and playing a game of which church, we found ourselves at an outdoors kirkin o’ the tartan. The morning was crisp; there were bagpipes. This was new to both of us. I pushed back the urge to take off my shoes. Holy ground. I vowed not to be such a stranger.
I came home and started visiting a few churches around town. I’ve been in this spot before. I have reconciled myself to the fact that whatever may come, I am as a moth to a flame.
Oh, but that anger! It can sneak up on a person. One moment, I’m living in the glow, and the next, I’m ready to rage that people just won’t see. Won’t act. Can’t see. I found myself singing “Gonna lay down my sword and shield,” and I would think, not now. Please, Lord; not now. I stumbled forward. More and more, I found myself thinking, “I am ok. I am really ok.” Then, I began to say, “I am happy. I am really ok and happy.” Finally, I came to a place where I could still taste the bitterness of this new life of dietary restrictions, rashes, headaches, fatigue, hair loss, dizziness, grief, and uncertainty, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, I am not only ok. I am good. I was the toddler who suddenly realizes they don’t need the coffee table to stand anymore. Even so, I faltered.
I thought I knew which church I would visit today. Except that someone needed something, and so once again, the clock made my decision. Or something like that. And so, I returned to that Easter church, but inside now. Masked, but open; listening. The fact that I’ve seen this preacher before, on one of our old stops, is not lost on me. The fact that it was during a rough patch is something with which I have wrestled. I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear anything from that season. Yet, here I am now. Taking it in. Jesus forgiving those who do not know. Those who know and do it anyway. Those who cannot. I breathe it in, this air for which I am not ready, for which I cannot live without. The air that can make me whole. There is communion with this wine I still cannot drink. And yet, in this moment, I do not care. Water can be wine. I feel a fresh surge of forgiveness. I wonder if others feel it too. Whoever I was and wasn’t is no more. I am reborn. Let there be new wineskins.
I don't speak for other people working through similar situations. I cannot. We've got to walk those lonesome valleys by ourselves. As much as I understand the desire to make people pay for suffering, I don't think I can bear the cost of constant vigilance and outrage. I don't know to whom and to where my anger is best served. I am tired.
It’s two years today. It would have also been my mother’s birthday. On a whim, I text my sister in law to invite my niece to over to play. We hula hoop in the living room, while listening to Mary Poppins on vinyl. Later, there is play doh; I will make her favorite food. I am a lot of things this weekend, but I am not angry. I am tired, thankful, relieved, peaceful, and not angry. The memories, while still close, are receding. I’m ready to lay down my sword, but not quite ready to lay down my shield. So I’ll keep the mask for while longer. After all, forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean letting someone drive the car when I know what kind of driver they are. Maybe by next Easter though. Or the one after that. Baby steps, my friends, baby steps.
