I don’t know if this makes sense, or not, but as I have watched my children deal with the sudden loss of life as they knew it this last month, it reminds me of the summer of 1968 when my father woke up one morning in New York City and dropped dead. My mother had died five years before. We were in a rental beach cottage when the phone rang early in the morning. By the time the fogged had burned off, I had become a ward of New York State. Then, as now, there were logistics to figure out. How to get home. Should we drive or take public transportation? Would I be able to enter fourth grade at my school in the fall? Who would go to the grocery store? People dropped food off in a cooler on the porch.
My stepmother, who had married my father 18 months before his death, became my court appointed guardian. She and my older sister retreated into their own worlds of grief, and I was mostly left to my own devices. I hugged my dog fiercely and refused to travel back to the city without her. I took long walks on the beach. I made a quick point pillow of a spouting whale. I reorganized my shell collection. I wrote a silly songs to sing to myself.
Back in the city, I spent hours staring out the bay window of my bedroom, watching the comings and goings at the Barbizon Hotel across the street. I read Harriet, The Spy. I played records of sound tracks of movies and shows we had seen together. The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang. I tried to mask my loss and anxiety with humor. I drew, what I thought were funny little pictures- mostly smiley faces – with colored chalk on the board that hung in our kitchen. I left little notes – Have a Nice Day! – Desperately hoping to make anyone smile. Reminders to all that I was still here.
Going out in public was an ordeal. Happy families haunted us. We stopped shopping. Orders were called into Gristedes and Bloomingdales. Groceries and cases of toilet paper and gin were delivered. We stopped going to busy restaurants, movies or theaters. As a silver lining, I learned to make do with what I had. To this day, I can always entertain myself and make my own fun. I escape into books, arts and crafts. I developed a “you get what you get and you don’t get upset” mantra. I was too young to know it was resilience.
Life never did go back to the way we were after that. There was a new normal. I learned to face uncertainty and keep moving forward. I learned that all we have is now. Sure, I finished school, grew up, got married and had a family of my own. I learned that milestones and daily life events are more special, because I know what it is to go without.
So flash forward 50 + years. Who’s ready for a pandemic? It turns out I have been social distancing for decades, without realizing there was a name for it. Subconsciously, I am always preparing for a sudden loss of life the way I knew it. I have always worked from home. When I moved to suburbia, everyone thought I was nuts or lazy because I didn’t go to the malls or grocery stores. I would shrug. “It’s just the way I was raised.” I am able to find, bread, paper products, produce, dog food, toiletries – anything we need and have it delivered. Who’s crazy now? It turns out scheduling delivery times has become another valuable life skill.
I find myself telling my children that even though this isn’t what they had planned, they are learning the same valuable life lessons I learned when I was 10. Will there be school? Will there be travel? That after they come through this, they will be able to handle most anything.
As a cancer and a stroke survivor, I know I will not be first in line for a ventilator should COVID-19 come knocking on my door, but I’m OK with that. I have lived the life I imagined. I can stay home and do my part. You can’t inconvenience me enough to save others. I have my father to thank for that.