Loss in the Time of Coronavirus
It has been one month since my dad died.
One month since I last held his hand, one month since I got to have one last conversation with him - a conversation I am trying so hard to recall all the details of, but find them slipping through my memory. I got to his house a little before 3pm that Tuesday, the sun was shining, the promise of spring was in the air. Some of the flowers my dad and brother had planted last fall were poking their green shoots up out of the ground. My dad had waited all day for me to get there so he could tell me in person he was going for pain relief over consciousness - i.e. hitting the morphine hard. I don’t think he had the words to tell me that they had decided to also turn off his saline drip, but when I noticed, the decision was confirmed; it was also time, his body was starting to fail him, his kidneys unable to process the fluids. Of course I understood - he’d been fighting pain for so long, and it was at the point where he could no longer stand. I hated seeing him in so much pain long before that day.
I am desperate for details of that conversation, not realizing at the time it would be our last. I had just come from the car repair center, to finally get an estimate for the damage from last spring, and I forget what he said about it, if anything. I do recall he was happy with my choice of a meal - a bowl of red chili with cheese sprinkled in. His recipe, of course. A recipe I’ve been making since I left for college, always a bowl of comfort, a reminder of my childhood, and a frequent topic of debate with my dad on the ratios of each ingredient, how much liquid makes a delicious batch. It’s been one month.
It’s also been three weeks since our larger community has been under a stay at home order here in Colorado. It’s been three weeks since I’ve hugged a friend, gone out to dinner with anyone, or ventured into public spaces without some level of stress and suspicion about the people who are near me (too close!). The Coronavirus is a collective trauma that we are all enduring - fears about our health, the health of our loved ones, our financial wellbeing, our mental wellbeing. I am a part of this, and feel for my community at large, for everyone. It has also overshadowed my dad’s passing, the world’s loss of Edward B. Cordes, my loss.
Today I participated in a group grief journaling session, where about 30 people who are all grieving the loss of someone got together on Zoom and went through a journaling process. For me it felt nice to be around people who were experiencing similar things as I am - loss in the time of Coronavirus. For an hour it felt like my grief could come to the surface, it could show its face, and I could physically feel it brimming in my chest, teasing my throat and eyes, until the tears finally fell out. “Of course you are crying,” I know you are thinking, “your dad just died”. But to the contrary, and much to my own surprise, I have not found myself in puddles of tears at the drop of a hat, I have not been stuck in bed, unwilling to get up to face the day.
Rather, my grief has been more quiet, more subtle, of late. I find myself feeling pangs of sadness because I see my dad’s ski poles in a photo that sits in my living room, before I even register why my chest hurts. I think of my dad when I’m eating something I know he would like, be it my own last batch of chili, or just heated up Ranchero beans with some cheese and Cholula sauce - it makes me both smile and feel sad at the same time. Same for when I listen to the “birdies” sing outside my window, or look at the spring tulips, which he loved. It has only been one month since my dad died.
There’s a dichotomy to this season that many of us are facing - it’s at once strange, yet familiar, likely unnoticed in “normal”, non-pandemic times when we are too busy to pause. Being stuck inside our homes is both stressful and at the same time a chance to slow down. This time in quarantine has been a gift for me, a chance to care for and nurture myself, to give myself time to heal in a safe space. It has also continued to keep me at a distance from all those that I love and the life I am creating that I didn’t have much time to see or live over the last nine months. In the journaling session this morning, we worked through a prompt that helped us see that there is room for everything we are experiencing. For me there is room for enthusiasm about the future, what’s to come, what I can make happen, and there’s room to grieve that none of those plans will include my dad, at least in a physical, earthly way. There’s room for me to luxuriate in this forced solitude, to enjoy everything about staying at home in my own world with no FOMO, because everyone else is stuck at home, but there’s also room for me to feel lonely, and alone, and to miss the world I’ve felt separated from for so long. There’s room for peace and quiet, and yet also room to feel the chaos and uncertainty of this time.
I miss my dad so much. I think of him constantly. I pick up the phone all the time to call him, only to have the simultaneous realization that he’s not there to answer. I think he’s only visited me once, as I walked away from his body when the undertakers were preparing to take him. I had this overwhelming sense of light, and that if I could get through his death, everything was going to be alright. I know that was him, his words; he gave me that courage to walk away, that sense of peace. There is room for grief and sadness, and there is room for happiness and hope.
It’s been one month.
Everything’s going to be alright.