Oh, Taylor.

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather since mid-week. Nothing major – scratchy throat for a couple of days, and a general feeling of malaise. It didn’t stop me from the treadmill and all the running around that we always do on The Husband’s 2 days off; but yesterday, I really didn’t feel good.

When I’m feeling the sort of run-down that heightens every ache and pain – which shoots off a distress signal to my brain, where the real fuckery begins – I listen. This was not always the case. As women, we’ve taught ourselves to minimize our own well-being, lest we be perceived as being sOfT or too DeLiCaTe or, worse yet, SELFISH. We’re the caretakers, and that doesn’t mean for ourselves. I’ve got to wonder: who came up with that set of parameters? Was it a man? See, I don’t think so. I think it was a woman, and a shitty one, at that. To quote the late, great Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright:

“And just remember – there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

PASC, or Long Covid, has really changed how I address not feeling quite right. There’s still so little information about why it happens, and I don’t know when the science will catch up to it. What researchers do believe is that Covid basically lights up the immune system, putting it into overdrive. While you want your immune system to be strong, you don’t want it to attack healthy cells. With PASC, that’s what it appears to do. Multiple systems become inflamed, and that inflammation translates into multiple symptoms – all of which suck a dick.

I have been taking a daily protocol that seems to be providing some relief for many PASC patients, including me. It consists of an antihistamine – Claritin for me, since I already take it for uticaria – for allergic inflammation; Pepcid, for gut inflammation; Omega-3, for brain food; and melatonin, for serotonin stimulation. I started in mid-August of 2021, and, by October, I could exercise again, and I just felt generally better. Not 100%, but better. You take what improvements you can get with PASC.

The problem with feeling a lot better is that I tend to forget that I’m not entirely better. If I push it too far, I can relapse. And with the “return to normal,” or whatever the fuck this is, exposure to other viruses, bugs, and even Covid still, I have to be careful. Some of it is psychological: my brother and nearly 6 million other Americans are just gone, and so many millions of us have gotten sick in varying degrees. Nothing about this virus is standard, or garden variety, and we don’t yet know whether it hides in a dormant state in our bodies. That stark reality can really fuck with your head, and since I’m already a little bit bonkers, it’s just another special ingredient in my brain stew.

In October, at the beginning of exercise, and now. YUGE difference.

I basically slugged it on the couch and let my boys take care of me. Never underestimate the power of the feline. By last night, I was feeling so much better.

Then, the news of Taylor Hawkins’s death smacked me in the face about 3 minutes after it was tweeted, and everything just, well, it got dark.

I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know how we survive each blow as they come. Holy mother of fuck – why can’t we just breathe for a bit?

If any of you have been living underneath a rock for the past 25 years and don’t know who Taylor Hawkins was, he was the drummer for the Foo Fighters. He was fierce, and explosively talented, and sweet, and his star shone so, so bright. One cannot think of the Foos without pairing Dave Grohl with Taylor; they were fiercely close, and Taylor was the member of the band who was most likely to be by Dave’s side during interviews. When one says, “Foo Fighters,” Taylor would be the first thought that comes to mind nearly as much as Dave.

Taylor Hawkins was the only drummer who could sit behind that drum kit and make you forget that the greatest drummer was holding a guitar and singing in front of him, not playing the drums – and you were glad.

I have spent the entirety of this decade grieving, sick, struggling, and combating feelings of hopelessness, despair, futility, and dread. There have been scant moments of happiness, and they fit on the fingers of one hand:

A grandson born at the very beginning.

The absolute joy on my brother’s face when he heard that the Orange Menace had lost the election.

New music from my most beloved bands.

A ginger fur angel sent to me to love and to cherish.

A concert (The Foos) that checked off a box on a list of things that I wanted/needed to do.

Throughout this absolute hell of a first part of the decade, there’s been one, consistent element that has held me up, encouraged me, and dragged me through the worst of it. That element is music, and specifically, the Foo Fighters.  When I could not bear to listen to the music that had united my brother and I in a sort of raucous, secret society within enormous, worldwide fandoms, I found that the Foos provided a soothing balm that soaked into my pain and diluted it a bit. I still don’t know why I was able to immerse myself in their music; Charlie and I had together loved them every bit as much as KISS or Ghost. I should have been awash with sorrow every time I heard them. I have definite thoughts about why I wasn’t. 

On September 15, 2021, we traveled to Syracuse, New York, to St. Joseph’s Amphitheater, to attend a Foo Fighters concert. Our journey to Syracuse was quiet, but not uneventful. The forecast had warned of rain for days before, and rain is what we got nearly all the way northeast. Torrential, blinding, thunderous, hydroplane-inducing rain, with impossibly low-hanging, ominous clouds pregnant with moisture, promising more where that came from. Inwardly, I shuddered. I envisioned us being soaked and shivering in our lawn seats, going home with colds or worse. “So we get wet,” The Husband said, matter-of-factly. “It’s the Foo Fighters.” He is not the fan that I am; he appreciates them and thinks Dave is cool, but we were clearly going for me, not him.

The concert, itself, was amazing. That is, once it finally began. The weather we had traveled with had settled into New York City, where the band was making the short flight to Syracuse from. They waited on the tarmac for 4 hours before finally getting the okay to fly. Dave told a hilarious story about it, which I recorded:

We were very fortunate that they made it literally at the last minute, but I never had a doubt. That night, there was the most gorgeous sunset, and I could feel my brother’s presence, his face illuminated in deeply rose-colored fire. Even a musically-solid opening band, with a spastic lead singer having an existential crisis onstage, making it difficult to react in any way other than “What the fuck did he just say?” didn’t faze me; I knew that the plane would make it, much like the Foos’ song, Wheels.

When the wheels touch ground (when the wheels touch ground)
And you feel like it’s all over
There’s another round for you

No one entertains like Dave Grohl. No one engages with his audience like that motherfucker does. I use motherfucker with love, because he’s notorious for referring to his audiences as just that. Let me tell you: there isn’t anything more thrilling than being called a motherfucker by Dave Grohl – except probably meeting him. Since I very much doubt that I will ever have that opportunity, I’m content with being called a motherfucker.

I danced. I shouted. I laughed. I shrieked. I delighted in seeing Pat Smear’s joyous, bouncy guitar playing because he is truly an ICON and his face makes me happy. I delighted in Taylor Hawkins and his freight train, bombastic energy. That guy’s smile lit up the world. I did all those things. I was caught up in the music, in the magic of a late night outside, singing along with every song and knowing that the 17,000 other souls were right there in the zone with me.

And then, it happened. They performed These Days. It’s one of my favorites, and it is apparently a favorite of someone in Ghost, because it’s always a part of their pre-show, piped in music. Charlie noticed it, and was thrilled that, in his words, “Papa likes the Foo Fighters!” When I reminded him that Dave Grohl had actually produced and played on a Ghost album, he laughed out loud and said, “Yeah! Duh.”

I could feel the swelling of emotions rising from within as I sang along with the band. When it got to the chorus, sobs tore from my chest and my eyes made actual tears. I sang even as I brayed, gripping The Husband’s arm. It felt, for a moment, like it had the day I had lost Charlie, in that tiny room. That searing agony as the cries tore up through my chest and throat and clawed their way out of my mouth, like a cloud of bats. I released them into that crowd, feeling my heart straining against the confines of my body. I let the pain carry me as I sang. I saw The Husband break down for a moment, and then we embraced. We were united in a moment of such extreme grief, all the hopes for a future where we would dream up ways for Charlie to do all the things and make his dreams come true just gone. Gone.

Seeing Taylor perform Queen’s “Somebody to Love” was truly one of the most emotional parts of the concert. The guy just exuded vulnerability; I wanted to fold his wiry frame into a fierce hug and say, “I love you.” I wish that I could have. I didn’t know that it would be the first and last time that I would experience that performance in person.

It’s gut-wrenching to think about.

On the first anniversary of Charlie’s death, I was determined to make it a normal day. I got on the treadmill. I tuned into my fast-pace playlist. I was nearly an hour in when the song I was listening to just stopped. There was silence for a few seconds. Then, the stripped-down version of “Times Like These” began to play. A warm flush suffused my body, and I let the lyrics sink in:

I, I’m a new day rising
I’m a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?
Ah-ah-ahh

It’s times like these you learn to live again
It’s times like these you give and give again
It’s times like these you learn to love again
It’s times like these time and time again

I sobbed. I picked up the pace. I knew that my brother was coming through, and that this was his message. When it was over, I stopped, and looked at the screen of my phone, at the playlist. It wasn’t my playlist. It was the Foo Fighters page on Spotify. Call it whatever you want, but I know that I wasn’t in charge of my phone that day, as it nestled in the side pocket of my shorts. It was divine.

I hope, that once the dust settles and the confusion and searing grief let up just a little, and all the immediate, painful sorrow has dripped from the eyes of everyone close to Taylor, that his loved ones – his family, both immediate and band family – and friends, will feel Taylor coming through to them with his own message of love and strength. I know my brother is looking for you in that Otherside, Taylor. He’ll find you, and you’ll hear him shout,

“MOTHERFUCKER.”

And then, he’ll hoot with laughter.

How the breast was won

I know, I know: it’s been a while since I’ve been here, creating. To be honest, I may finish this, and I may lose interest. That’s my brain, one year post-Covid. If you’re reading this, though? I deserve a gold star. It’s the first thing I will have managed to actually create in many months. So, let’s not speak of absences; instead, let’s be glad that I’m trying.

I both love, and hate, Facebook Memories. Right now, they tend to hit me right in my tender, raw heart, but I will always be grateful for the reminders of good times. My brother was one funny motherfucker.

If you didn’t really know my brother, this photo is all you need in order to say that you do now. This was taken in October of 2019 – a time that will be heretofore referred to as The Before. This was during the Human Cheeto Days, but Before the fictional Upside Down World, from Netflix’s Stranger Things, became reality.

Behold, His Majesty, King Cock Schnozz, Righteous Leader of the Horse’s Ass movement and benevolent admirer of all things mammary.

Back when he was about 17 or 18, he had become obsessed with referring to his favorite part of the female anatomy as “hooters.” He found it hysterical, and would alternate between delightedly squealing it, or just uttering it in a sort of creepy, demented, euphoric way. He was an equal opportunity admirer who would comment, “Nice hooters,” in a conversational tone about any woman who attracted his attention. This included me…and our mother.

While she was more apt to shout at him, I realized that not only was he dealing with hormones and not understanding them, but he was completely unaware of social mores that decreed that a brother must not admire his sister’s breasts; at least, not in Pennsylvania. Once I sat him down and explained to him that any woman he was related to was explicitly off-limits where his hooter-ogling was concerned; and that furthermore, it was unacceptable to comment in such a way to ANY woman, he understood. All you really had to tell him was that something was bad, and he’d get the message. Rules were important to him, and this was a hard and fast one. Our mother lacked the patience with him to “have a conversation” about anything related to sex; once I could get him to stop giggling, I drove the point home and he incorporated these rules into his inner dialogue of Shit That Ain’t Funny (and could get you grounded, punched, or arrested).

He still enjoyed a nice pair, although we knew that he would never actually touch a boob, due to his extreme squeamishness and discomfort with his own person being touched. This was a guy who refused to touch his own peen, even to go to the bathroom. He perfected a way of standing that aimed things right into the toilet bowl; it was a harrowing sight if one stumbled into the bathroom when he was in there. He also never closed the door.

Still, he was a red-blooded young man who, despite his autistic super powers, deserved to be able to admire the objects of his affection in the privacy of his own room, so I set out to create an “outlet” for him. My sister-in-law had recently split up from her latest guy – a man she met in a bar and impulsively married a month later. The marriage had lasted a year, which was nothing short of a personal record for her; we never knew who her kids would be calling “Daddy” at the next family function. I knew this guy wasn’t going to stick; he had stopped all activity except sleeping in the marital bed less than a month after the honeymoon, much to my sister-in-law’s extremely vocal complaints. She begrudgingly accepted his explanation that he was just “stressed out and exhausted” from his job as a used car salesman.

That is, until she had been awakened one night by frenetic movement on their bed, only to find him having his way with himself, while a porno magazine provided inspiration. She kicked him out of bed, then out of the house. When she was clearing out his belongings from the bedroom, stuffing them into trash bags and throwing them out the second story window onto the front lawn, she discovered about 100 “dirty” magazines under the bed, pushed back into the shadowy darkness. She’d called me, furious. “You have got to come see this.”

I didn’t want to go see anything having to do with her, the soon-to-be ex-husband, the scene of the crime, or his nasty, little secret. Unfortunately, they lived across the street from us, and I lacked the ability/spine to say, “Fuck no, I don’t want to see shit.” Instead, I made my way across the street, dreading what I was about to encounter. I imagined some sort of secret, apocalyptic shrine to porn, with discarded tighty whiteys the size of a trash bag (they were a plus-sized couple), scrunched-up, used Kleenex, and jizz streaks all over the walls and floor. What? How was I supposed to know what had caused her so much shock that she needed a witness? I told you that I was young; my brain still couldn’t process the fact that he’d had the audacity and sheer depravity to wank himself right there beside her as she slept. Dude! Retire to the bathroom, or shower, or to your apocalyptic shrine to porn. Have a little respect for the woman whose tits you had motorboarded at the bar the night you met, shouting, “I gotta MARRY you, Baby!”

Instead, I walked in to their house, only to find her at the dining room table, a stack of magazines in front of her. And by a stack, I mean a mountain, a veritable mini-library of porn. There were so many of them. Wordless, I sat down, staring at the tower of smut and filth before me. “These were all under the bed. He hid them up by the headboard. They’re disgusting!” I didn’t want to touch them; I mean, he had used them, all of them; and there were so many of them. She must have read my mind, because she said, “They’re not, well, there’s no cum or anything.” Okay, I’ll take your word for it, but you voluntarily let that man’s peepee reside with you and in you.

As I looked through the titles, I was struck by the hilarity of them:

Beaver Hunt

Juggs

Gourmet Editions

Barely Legal

Big Butt

Panty Play

There were Hustlers, and Playboys, and Penthouse, but it was clear that this guy liked to have a wide variety at his disposal. Mostly, it was just gross, but we did have a laugh at some of the, uh, spreads. She said she was going to put them out in the trash. Why not just let him take them? I asked. “Fuck him,” she said. “He can go fuck himself.” Well, that’s why he needed the magazines, I thought.

Later, as Charlie sat in our living room, watching TV with my kids, I was suddenly struck with an idea. I excused myself and ran over to my sister-in-law’s house. “Can I have some magazines?” I asked. ” I have an idea.” I explained to her what I planned to do. She cackled, and waved her hand dismissively. “Take’em all!”

I took a stack home and hid them well, because five kids can smell the secrecy on you and will find the contraband that you are concealing, if you aren’t extremely wiley. Over the next couple of days, other materials needed in order to produce my great idea were procured. I had to work when the kids weren’t home or in bed, so it took a few days, but when I was finished, there was a LOT of giggling. When I showed it to my mother and explained what it was for, she giggled, too.

I waited until Charlie was out on one of his epic walks, and then Mom and I installed my work in his bedroom. When he returned, we casually said that he ought to hang out and play Nintendo in his room for a bit. He easily agreed, and we stealthily followed him. And waited.

“HOOTERS!”

As we walked into his room, he stood, staring at the wall where I had hung the largest collage of ta-tas that I think anyone had ever seen. I had painstakingly cropped hundreds of boobies from those magazines and glued them artfully to the poster board. Letters spelling out HOOTERS had been layered in there, too. Charlie turned to look at us, his face lit up like it was Christmas morning. At this time, he had been growing a mustache, and, in his parachute material track suit, he resembled a 70s porn star. You could almost hear the “Bow-chicka-wow-wow.” His smile was of pure delight. Then, he did a high-pitched, trademark Charlie “Geek!” squeal and started a little prancing move; just like that, he was my little brother who had just been given a new Star Wars figure or a game for his Nintendo. Except that he was becoming a man, and while these were “toys” he would likely never even glance his hand across accidentally, he could still look, in the privacy of his own bedroom.

Charlie kept that monument to breastage for many years, and even ate at a Hooters restaurant when he was on a trip with friends from his workshop to the Eastern Shore one summer. He never lost those liquid stars in his eyes when he would see a “foxy lady,” and Kamala Harris was his last crush.

“Wow. Beautiful,” he breathed, watching her on television. “Nice hooters.”

Cold day in the sun

Nine years ago today, I lost my mother.

It was getting much easier to remember her with love and gratitude. What had begun with an all-consuming pain had softened with the passage of time. She had lived a long life. She was no longer suffering from the awful, chronic illnesses that had robbed her of the last 10 years of her life.

I was pretty angry at her for a while. Her stubbornness – the refusal to write out advanced directives, to give me access to her insurance policies, and her unwillingness to tell me things about her relationship with my dad – forced me into situations and to make decisions I very much should not have had to make. No child should have to say, “Stop all lifesaving measures for my mother.” That weighs on a person. It weighed on me, and you know what? It fucked me up for a long time.

I had come to a sort of peace about that. Time is kind in that it allows for wounds to heal and scar over, if the spirit is willing. My therapist and I were about to start examining the traumas I endured as a child, and mapping out where it all went so wrong. I wanted to forgive – but not absolve – her.

And then came December 28, 2020, and that fragile stability inside me shattered completely. I haven’t been whole since, and I don’t believe that I ever will be. I spent those first few weeks battling the virus that stole from me, staying alive, and grieving in isolation. No touch, no embraces, no human contact. I had a loving, warm, amazingly supportive husband who gives the best hugs right there, 8-10 feet away at all times, and I could not crawl into his arms on the couch and sob until I fell asleep. Humans are not meant to grieve without physical contact. Let me tell you: that fucks you up, too. You’re so deeply entrenched in your sorrow, and you’re at the mercy of that same novel coronavirus that just killed your brother. No one can hug you and say, “You will be okay.” No one can hug you and say, “I’m here for you.” You’re on this infected island, and rescue is right off the reefs that surround it, unable to reach you.

One of my fears, these past 9 months, has been that my mom is angry with me for not keeping her precious boy – MY adored brother – safe. That she is on the other side of the veil, disappointed in me, like she was all my life. She envied our bond, which was that intense, fierce love that siblings have for each other, made even stronger because he was in need of my protection. Autism may have made him vulnerable, but it didn’t define him, and intellectual delays didn’t limit him, and it didn’t define our relationship. He was kind and hilarious and joyous and deeply, deeply weird. Covid robbed the world of his shining light. It robbed me of the one person in this world who had been there the longest and who loved me the most. I could never disappoint him; everything I did was astonishing and cool to him. He was the one person who looked at me and saw perfection. And now, he’s gone, like dust in the wind, and maybe he knows how flawed I am.

It did give him back to our mother. My fear is that she, in turn, told him “I told you so.” Do I believe that? I don’t want to, but she has been very quiet for a while now. She has always given me signs when I least expected, and most needed them. Dimes, her voice piercing that thin film between sleep and consciousness, or reminders of her in songs that play, or in the eerily familiar gait of a stranger in a store.

I could use one today, no matter how small. There has been a heaviness all week, and no, I am not okay. Today, I don’t think that I’m going to pretend that I am. It feels very lonely, this double-grief thing. It feels like being caught in a late-Autumn rain without an umbrella or raincoat. You trudge along under the dark gray skies, kicking sodden, dead leaves and soaking your shoes in puddles. You just want to get home, to the warmth, to a towel, to dry clothes, so you keep moving. When you get there, you dry off and change and then dive underneath a blanket, because a chill has set in, right into your marrow. It takes hours to really feel warm again. That’s what this sadness feels like; only I never quite lose that chill. It feels like an intrinsic part of me now.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got today.  Tomorrow will be better. I say that every day that dawns with the solitary, sorrowful bell tolling inside my head, announcing that this is another “first.” It keeps me going. Today, the sun is peeking out from behind the clouds and I can see blue skies.

But it’s raining, inside my head.

How many bandaids have you got?

I am broken. And I’m strangely at peace with it.

I was cracked before the events of December 28, 2020, when the ground disappeared underneath my feet. Just over a month prior, I’d checked myself into a psychiatric ward because I was absolutely positive that if I didn’t, I would commit suicide. Too many changes had occured in tandem with being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and OCD. My self-esteem was subterranean. I hurt. I felt that I hurt others just by existing. I wanted all the hurt to go away.

Looking back, I am absolutely certain that, had I not gone to the hospital and had instead somehow managed to avoid death that week, I would have died on December 28th, or soon after. I survived – made myself survive – because those 5 days in the hospital had armed me with coping skills that protected me when the stakes were as high as they could ever have been.

There was a moment, in that little waiting room where the ER staff had led the husband and I to when we arrived in tandem with the ambulance, where I am positive that I could have just dropped dead from the trauma. It was after the serious discussion we’d had with the doctor – whose name I don’t remember – about how to proceed. We had entered the eye of the hurricane at that point, and the room was quite still around me, but the back wall was quickly advancing toward us. I had to verbally tell him what I wanted him to do – or more correctly, not to do – and by that time, I was being tossed around by the force of the absolute storm of terror that was pummeling me.

I could barely get the words out. I cowered, my head between my knees, sobbing uncontrollably. I raised my head and looked into my husband’s eyes. “How,” I asked him, “how do I do this? What is happening? Why do I have to be the one to do this again?”

I was referring, of course, to a similar room in a different hospital, just over 8 years ago. In that room, we sat, in stunned silence, while my mother’s internist and a nurse explained to me that my mother was leaving us. It was a matter of time. And as she had no advanced directives or living will, how to proceed was going to be my decision. And that decision broke me, back then.

And here I was, at this terrible, horrific fork in the road again. Intellectually, I knew that the road might fork now, but that all roads led to one eventual destination. My head dropped again. I laced my fingers over my skull. The doctor asked me again. “Okay,” I choked out. “Okay, what?” he asked, urgency in his voice. “I’m so sorry, but I need to hear you say the words.”

I said them. Bleak desolation filled my entire being. I actually felt my soul trying to detach itself from my body. The pain was searing, like being electrocuted. I threw my head back and wailed. I ripped off my mask and threw it. I threw my phone. I threw my glasses.

I have never experienced a pain like that before.

Lately, I’ve been struggling with things that I knew would probably happen. Remembrances triggered by an image, a sound, a scene, a person. We all do this when we are grieving; this, at least, is a familiar phenomenon. I saw a man walking one day while we were out, and something in his gait and the way he wore his baseball hat was familiar. For a second, I forgot. I forgot, and nearly exclaimed, “There he is!” Realization washed over me and I couldn’t breathe. The pain that arrived with my sobs was excruciating. I felt absolutely terrible. How? How did I forget? I spent the rest of the day feeling lonely and wretched.

And then nearly shouted his name the next day, when I was laughing at something silly that Goose was doing. I wanted him to come see. Except, well, yeah.

What in the actual fuck is going on? My Covid-addled brain may be shorting out, but it’s not this bad. Again – intellectually, I know that these things happen. It’s just that it hurts. Good Christ, it hurts. It makes me want to crawl out of my skin to get away from it. We are nearing 6 months. Why is the grief AS painful as it was in the beginning? Why is it like a million little cuts all over my body? Why am I not bleeding? How the fuck am I not bleeding?

Grief has no timeline, I know. I don’t cry as much as I did, but it doesn’t take much for me to feel that gut-clenching, full-chested, searing feeling welling up from somewhere inside of me to erupt into a torrent of inconsolable sobs. Yes, inconsolable. Because no one has the right words. This is uncharted territory, Covid death grief, and only others experiencing it really understand how it feels. They have no consoling words, either, because there are none.

I guess we, the millions of people who have lost someone – or many someones – to this virus, who simply try to get through the days after our loved ones were brutally stolen from us, will need to come up with new words that can convey the desolate wastelands inside of us. We’ll come up with words, because although we know that it still cannot transfer the experience of pain that we are feeling to an unknowing person, that’s exactly the point. We don’t want anyone who hasn’t been thrown into this maelstrom of “It’s been (fill in the blank) days/months/a year; why am I still so sad? Why isn’t it feeling any better?” We are legion and we don’t desire any more members. The fact that the US alone is still logging 300 deaths a day, despite the vaccines, is excruciating to us.

I know that someday, I’ll laugh without that sinking feeling that immediately follows. I know that I won’t always feel guilty for taking pleasure in certain things; in the joys that life can bestow. I will be able to think of him without wanting to rip my heart out of my chest and offer it as tribute if I could only bring him back.

But right now? I can’t do any of that. The world is gray, despite all the colors. Telling me to look for the gifts, the signs, the blessings, and telling me that he will always be with me; those words are heartfelt and loving and I am sure that someday, I will be able to do all those things. I dearly love every, single person who has offered advice, or consoling words, or related their experience with the grief journey. It’s just that, at this moment, nothing truly helps, and it’s becoming difficult to put the mask that I wear to trick people into thinking that I am doing okay.

I’m doing my therapy. I’m taking my meds. I shower every day. I put on clean clothes. I brush my teeth. I rearrange furniture, plan projects. I hold my Goose, and dote on him. I think of little ways to show my husband that I care. I keep up appearances.

But – yep, there it is – I am not okay. I am afraid that this is all there is. And I am afraid that this body of mine, this fucked brain, the loss of words, the memory loss, all of the fuckery that Covid has wrought upon me? What if this is as good as it gets?

Don’t answer that.

There are no stages of grief.

Five months.

It’s been five months since you went away. Were ripped from my grasp. That’s what it felt like, and it’s what I see in my mind’s eye, when I think about that day; that memory (Memory? How the fuck is it so quickly a memory? How can YOU be a memory when you were overflowing with joyous, exuberant life?) is something that I revisit far too often for it to be any good for me. It’s true, though. It’s as if I was holding onto you fiercely, for 45 years, the undeniable fact of a big sister’s love like a fortress around you. It protected and cradled you from the forces that might try to harm you: unkind people, dangerous situations, dark and scary paths. I was as sure of my superhuman ability to shield you and care for you as I was that I knew my name. Nothing could harm you as long as I was there; nothing could break through my love for you.

Until Covid.

Covid: a virus of truly unknown origin, despite the earliest claims that it originated from a bat eaten by a pangolin that was then sold in a Chinese wet market. That it came from a bat is still more than likely true; how that bat came to be in Wuhan, despite its kind only being found in a cave some 1500-2000 miles southwest of Wuhan, has yet to be explained. Whether or not the virus existed in its potentially deadly form within that bat – or if the stuff that could make a person dead were actually laboratory engineered – remains a mystery that might never be explained.

As I watched the pandemic unfold, it struck me, in the earliest days, how unpredictable this virus was. I didn’t worry very much until everything began to shut down. Even then, I reasoned with myself that this was just an overabundance of caution that would dissipate quickly.

When the worldwide death toll began climbing, and leaked photos and videos from Wuhan hit social media, I checked myself. This wasn’t just a cold or a flu, and it was a danger to you.

You know the rest – how we stayed home, stayed in, were socially distant when we absolutely had to go out, and how I made us masks way before the CDC advised it and the mandates went into effect.

No one could deny that we were extremely careful. No one could find fault with how diligent we were. Throughout everything that would happen from the day we began, we persisted in keeping each other – and you, most importantly – safe. When the vaccines were announced, we all breathed a sigh of relief. We were nearly there. The few weeks it would take to get those shots in arms were going to be a cake walk after what we’d endured so far. I did something very much out of character for me: I fell for that false sense of security. I gave myself a little pat on the back; I had protected you from an invisible threat because that’s what I did and no one could do it better. While I did not let my guard down, I felt we had turned a corner.

The problem was, there was a stillness. I didn’t recognize it at all, but it was there: the stillness that precedes a bad storm; in this case, a massive, mile-wide tornado. It was one of those monsters that forms in the middle of the night. If one peers out into the inky darkness on such a night, all they will see is the reassuring shapes and shadows of their surroundings as the the gravid, tumescent air surrounds and envelopes them in a wet sheen of sweat. The wind may begin blowing and the sirens will go off literally a minute before it roars through, destroying everything in its path.

The morning of December 28th, I was Dorothy, swirling violently in that tornado. All that which I loved swirled around me, and you were there, gripping my hands. We held on tightly, and I kept screaming to you, “It’s going to be okay! We’ll be fine! I’ve got you and I WILL NEVER LET GO.“

But then, the twister whipped with deadly force and I looked into your wide, brown eyes that registered alarm and cold fear and you were ripped away from my grasp, swirling so quickly that I barely had time to realize that my hands were empty when I was slammed into the frozen earth, the wind knocked out of me, my lungs deflated. The tornado was gone as quickly as it came, escaping through a tear in my sanity. And there was no dead witch underneath my house, and there sure as fuck was no good witch to guide me, nor were there ruby slippers for me to click together, taking me back home to where you were there and everything was fine.

Sorrow. All I feel, with complete certainty, is sorrow. It descends down upon me like ash after an atomic bomb is detonated. Nothing can live through this nuclear winter. It extinguishes those moments of levity, of delight, and quiet joy. How dare I feel hope, when you can’t feel at all? What right do I have to those feelings, when the one thing that I was absolutely, 100% sure of – my ability to protect you from anything that blocked the way – was irretrievably broken by a pathogen, this microscopic, destructive, insidious, Russian Roulette of a virus?

Rage. Rage descends upon me with a ferocity that leaves me breathless with the desire to inflict pain upon someone, something, extinguishing that life force as definitively and with a finality in the same way that your death slammed into my soul.

Numb. I become numb, seeking to escape from those two states of being, desperate for some peace from the pain of my grief and the turbulence of my anger. I close my eyes and sink into a cold, anesthetized state of outward calm that acts as a mask that reassures those around me that I am accepting my loss, and coping with it, and inching along in tiny, incremental steps. “How are you?” they ask. “I’m okay,” I carefully lie.

It’s so odd to me, how the world keeps moving. How lives just simply go on. How those friends who, in the early days, frequently checked in and assured me of their love, have become mostly quiet. “We’re here for you,” they promised. Well, okay; your intentions were pure and I can’t fault that. Family, circling the wagons and just letting me be a sodden lump of raw agony. “We’ve got you,” they crooned, in those earliest days. Too soon, they’re now urging me to “not disappear, don’t fold into yourself, do the things you enjoy.”

I don’t know how. I try, but the result is nothing. No feeling of accomplishment, no pride, no payoff of confidence. I just shuffle through my days, doing things, hoping to throw them off the scent so that they won’t discover my treachery. Anything to avoid the inevitable waves of grief that turn me back into that sobbing mess that they aren’t sure how to deal with, or find it uncomfortable to have to see. Look, I really am trying, but there is no fucking roadmap, no book, no memorandum that details how to successfully recover, both mentally, emotionally, and physically, from a global pandemic that has killed millions – one of them being you, my little brother. I’ll figure out how to arrive at a kind of peace, but there are no stages to grief. That shit is a lie. They were developed for people with terminal illness to accept their fate, not for those grieving the loss of someone they loved. Somehow, it was appropriated, but not by me. Not for this.

Five months, though. Five months have passed by so very slowly for me, and everyone who was there with me in those earliest, darkest days is doing their best to move on. It’s what they have to do. Well, I can’t. I’m not ready to live in a world where you aren’t there. I’m not ready to move on. I’m watching everyone get on with the business of living, of rediscovering life without a mask and fear of a virus, of resuming the doing of all the things. I’m not envious, or resentful. Not of those who are treading carefully, but nevertheless relieved that the monster has been beaten back from their doorstep with the jab of a needle.

I reserve the resentment and yes, the rage, for those who politicized the pandemic; who denied the science; who refused – and still refuse – to be a part of the solution. I blame them for killing you. For your murder. That fury boils just underneath the surface of my skin, and when it is triggered, I feel as though anyone standing nearby must feel the heat radiating from me. The sorrow will extinguish it soon enough, a warm shower of salty tears. And then, the numbness will creep in, replacing everything with its icy calm.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay.”

The anger stage is, by far, the most enduring.

Sometimes, I follow popular trends. Taking selfies with bunny ears on Snapchat, seeing if the broom will stand on its own, guessing that the sneakers are pink and white and the dress is blue; I have taken part in all of these.

A current trend I will not take part in is putting a frame on my profile pic on Facebook, advertising that I’m vaccinated. I’m seeing it frequently now, but it just doesn’t seem like something I want to announce to the world.

I’m so happy that the gears are turning, and millions are getting shots in arms every day. I’m thrilled that the elderly are getting vaccinated, so that they can see their families again. I’m relieved for the frontline workers, healthcare personnel, and educators, because they’ve been our superheroes during this pandemic, and they are our heroes EVERY day. I’m grateful that our special needs and immunocompromised humans are getting protected from the Russian Roulette that is exposure to COVID-19. 

But, well…I’m not jumping up and down for joy.

113 days ago, my little brother sat before me, while I recorded him, and talked about how relieved he was that vaccines were rolling out. I’ve related before that he was absolutely terrified of needles. As a young child and into adulthood, he had to have frequent labs done, because of medications he was on; later, needles became a daily thing when he was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes.

Up until about 10 years ago, a visit to the hospital lab was reason enough for him to melt down. Individuals with the challenges he had tend to have extraordinary strength, and he exhibited Herculean reactions when he was panicked. Up to six healthcare personnel had to restrain him, throughout the years, whenever blood needed to be drawn or a shot needed to be administered. Even after learning to give himself insulin, he would be fraught with anxiety for weeks leading up his quarterly lab visits.

He was not, however, terrified by the prospect of having to get two vaccinations in order to be safe. He welcomed it. There was zero anxiety; only a fervent wish to just go get it done, already. As hard as the last 9 months had been for him, and the countless times we had found it necessary to explain to him why he needed to stay home, to wear a mask, to social distance, he understood that those two, little jabs to his arm would signal great protection – insulation from serious illness and possible death. He’d be able to work, to socialize, and to stop living in fear of an invisible enemy.

He LOVED his nieces and nephews and missed them so much.

I never told him what I thought about the “antis” out there: the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, anti-government, anti-intelligent people waving their Trump signs, with MAGA hats on their heads, shouting about rights and freedoms, the flag, statues, pedophiles in pizza parlors, the Satanic powers of Hillary Clinton, Jesus’s love for the Orange Menace, the microchips in the vaccines that would allow Bill Gates to control their thoughts, and how it was unconstitutional to have to protect others from the possibility of exposure to “just a cold, or a flu” by wearing masks in public.

Go back and read that. Tell me these people aren’t completely, totally whackadoodie-batshit-fucking nuts. Come on. Try to convince me that all these “antis” weren’t his enemies. Assure me that those “antis” aren’t my enemy now.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

This is the core of the anger I experience every, single day. It began about an hour after the husband and I returned home from the hospital, after Charlie had been pronounced dead. As the husband stood near the french doors in our apartment that look out onto our balcony, I sat, in desolate silence, on the couch. I had seen him cry more that morning than at any other time in the 20 years that we had been together. He was trying to get it together now. I felt made of stone. At my core, white-hot fury was gathering itself into a mass of nuclear pressure. “Burn it all down,” I said, quietly. “I want to burn it all down.” The husband looked at me, and couldn’t think of anything to say other than “Yes.”

The entire time we had been at the hospital – 120 minutes – ER staff had sequestered us in a small, waiting room. It was a bad room; I’d been in them before, and nothing good ever came of sitting in those rooms. During those short, 120 minutes, I’d frantically, tearfully talked to family and friends, gripped the husband’s hand, and listened to him as he calmly talked to our kids, telling them what he knew. The room was still, quiet, sterile and falsely welcoming; but it was also like being in a tornado. Chaos, being whipped around, violently, by emotions and terror, grabbing onto anything I could to keep from being swept away; roaring, deafening noise in my head.

In the midst of that storm, horrible things happened. The nurse, who kept us informed, checking in frequently and asking questions, and then the doctor’s notification that this was Covid, and what did I want them to do?

To do? What did I want? With all due respect, Doc, I want you to be the short, little old lady psychic in Poltergeist and to tell me that we could save him. I want you to tell him to stay away from the light, and send me in; I’ll be JoBeth Williams and I’ll go into the danger and I’ll bring him back. That’s what I want.

But of course, this was not a scary movie. It was reality, and it was so much worse. No, they didn’t “send me in” to coax him back. Do I think I could have? What I think is that he was scared, in pain, and alone, save for ER staff swarming around him. I probably couldn’t have coaxed him back, but I could have been there with him, so he would not have been afraid. I could have fulfilled the promise I’d made, when he was a baby, to be his protector. And in this way, the way things ended, I could have held his hand as he was guided to the light. This would have been some closure. For me. I’m not being selfish, wishing for that. Neither are millions of other Americans who experienced their own tornadoes.

So, when I read the conjecture of others, stating that getting the vaccine signifies an “end to all this awful business” and that “finally, we get our lives back,” I want to puke on them. When I hear people say that it must be a relief, to have that protection, after surviving the virus, I want to gut-punch them. When I see jubilant selfies shining out at me from profile pictures framed in “I’m fully vaccinated” banners, the urge to comment, “Bully for you” or hit the 😡 reaction is strong.

I resist, though. I resist, because I know they are relieved. They trust the science. They want to avoid the game of Russian Roulette, and they want to ensure that others avoid it, too. And they were there for me, a lot of them, in my darkest hours, when the urge to blot out my own existence was the strongest it has ever been.

Yes, I am fully-vaccinated. Getting Covid again is less of a worry, but since I don’t yet know what permanent damage having had it in the first place could have caused, the worry for my own well-being is really negligible. I don’t want to give it to someone else, though.

I’m not celebrating it, though, because 113 days ago seems so recent. How did we go from there to here without him? And how do I go from here to, well, 200 days, 300, 500 – without him? That remains to be seen. But while the rest of you are salivating at the prospect of vacations and pool parties and fairs and amusement parks and crowded bars, try to remember those who will never again experience those things, and the people they left behind. We are not okay, no matter what we tell you. We’ve been through a war; our loved ones lost were casualties, we Covid survivors are the walking wounded, and we have all suffered a terrible trauma. We want to be seen, our losses acknowledged, and for everyone to do their part to make sure this never fucking happens again.

Do I still want to burn it all down? That’s complicated. Just know this: if you ever supported Donald Trump, or said, “It’s just a flu,” or thought that wearing a mask was against your Constitutional rights, or claimed that masks don’t work, or referred to it as the “China virus,” or believed that hospitals were putting Covid as cause of death for EVERYONE that has died, so far, in order to make more money, or believed the election was stolen, or blamed “the illegals” for bringing the virus into the US, or supported border walls, or claimed that the January 6 insurrectionists were “patriots,” or uttered the words “snowflake,” “libtard,” or “not my President” about Joe Biden?

I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.

What I do know is that I don’t know, at all.

Some days begin hopefully. I’ll think I have it all under control and be going along just fine. I’m coping, I will tell myself.

Take yesterday, for example. I had been dreading the first big holiday. I didn’t want to do anything, or plan anything. Traditionally, I detest Easter and can’t wait for it to be over. But he was like an innocent child, tickled by the idea of a rabbit delivering candy (sugar-free, of course) and a plushie to him while he slept. He would become giddy at the prospect of a big, baked ham and hardboiled eggs galore. And I loved him, and I enjoyed his delight, so I did it. Every year. For 45 years, I got to see him hum with excitement at holidays.

It was so nice to see the kids, after a year of photos and videos and furtive drive-bys. It was nice, actually, to not have to adhere to specific plans. I enjoyed a trifecta of pleasant surprises when the husband brought home our McDonald’s dinner: not only had they remembered the straw, but the fries were FRESH and HOT and they weren’t out of apple pies! Hallelujah and can I get an Amen?!?

But then my brain did its thing – the thing it does best. It delivered to me a bleak dose of reality. It said, “You’re awful for enjoying not cooking, and dyeing eggs, and hiding an Easter basket. You suck for not doing all the things. Oh, sure, you made and decorated cupcakes for the kids, but you should have made them baskets since you couldn’t make him one. You’re a terrible Nana.”

• 

And then that crashing, nauseating, black cloak of sorrow fell over me – the one that says

“Can you BELIEVE that this fucking happened? ALL YOUR CAUTION.

All those times he wanted to see people, go somewhere, and you said no.

All the days where there was nothing to look forward to and he sat in his room or wandered through the house and you told him, “It won’t always be like this,” and you meant it, you felt it, and when the vaccines were announced, you patted yourself on the back and told yourself, “We did it! We kept him safe!” And you felt bad for all the millions who had lost loved ones, but you had done your job!

Yay, you and

You go, girl and

Kudos!

It was worth it, all of it; worth being sent DMs from people in your community who you didn’t know, calling you a cunt because you wanted to know where you could go and safely take him – where masks were mandatory, and social distancing was enforced.

It was worth having your face put on a poster adorned with swastikas by a local businessman and hung in his locales, declaring you ENEMY NUMBER ONE and “banning” you from entry.

It was worth the death threats, and the social media posts in local groups, wishing nothing but misery and failure and bad luck for you because of your heartless (non-existent) campaign to destroy the livelihoods of struggling businesses. It was worth the lies they made up about you and the slander and the hate. All of this outrageousness was perhaps disappointing to behold, because you desperately wanted to believe that people could be good, but it was also something you suspected would happen, because this place of your birth had been rejecting you since your mother brought you home from the hospital.

All of this outrageous, public outcry because you needed to keep him safe was worth it, even though you, and the thousands of other immunocompromised, elderly, and cautious humans in the community weren’t interested in public opinion or rhetoric. You all just wanted to know where you could avoid possible contact with an infected person. In a perfect world, everyone would see the mitigation efforts as a shared responsibility, a community effort, and yes, a patriotic gesture of solidarity.

This world was not perfect, however, because this country spawned a society that decided that an unqualified, bloviating, failed businessman with zero moral compass, a narcissistic core, and a greed like no other, was competent enough to lead our nation.

We’re In This Together, my ass.

You got sloppy. You patted yourself on the back a little too soon. You never once truly thought that he could be exposed, because you and everyone you permitted him to come into contact with were so careful. All the sacrifices had been worth it. You went into Christmas day with a feeling of quiet satisfaction and relief. You were gonna come out on the other side of this with shots in arms and a renewed sense of hope. Just a little while longer, you told him. And he believed you. You believed you.

Never in your wildest nightmares would you have predicted that your life would become a tragic, Shakespearian tale of woe and sadness. Never. You’d been through awful things throughout your life and weathered storms that had altered you chemically as a person, but this? This horror? This walking, talking, nightmare of consciousness? It felt as if the Universe was punking you, laughing and saying, “You didn’t actually think I was gonna let you get away with it, did you? Who told you that you could be happy? Who said that you were doing everything right? How DARE you be confident? Here – get in this big pool of black suck. Sink. Swim. Drift. I don’t give a shit.”

• 

Easter. A day of hope, and renewal, and beginnings. A day where the world rejoices because a man died for them, but then he was resurrected.

A fucking fairy tale. People don’t die and then magically live again, three days later, because if they did, I wouldn’t be writing this. If they did, the best, purest, sweetest, most innocent soul would have come back to me. “The Son of God,” he wasn’t, but he was a gift to the world. My brother was my light and my way.

And just like that, my brain goes on repeat and my heart sinks, dipping down into my toes. I am so tired.

Can you BELIEVE that this fucking happened?

Yes. Now, I can.

• 

Ashes

Long time, no blog. I know. Life has been having a locksocking, blanket party with me for the last 6-8 months. If I decide to stick around and write some more, I’ll fill you in. For now, only the subject of this essay matters.

We’ve reached a particularly dark anniversary in this country. You cannot escape it: it’s in the news, on social media, and the subject of lots of conversations. A year ago, the United States effectively shut down due to COVID-19. It was the right thing to do, the experts said. Having never experienced a pandemic – the last one of this magnitude was over 100 years ago – this was undiscovered territory for us all. Despite that fact, we tried to remain optimistic. We had top medical scientists who were on this, and our elected officials assured us that they would take care of us and that the virus would be brought under control. That proved to be our first mistake, but you don’t need a rehash of the rest. Over 520,000 deaths later, I think you’re aware.

The gravity of the pandemic situation was not lost on me from the very beginning, a year ago this week. I felt, right in my gut, that this country wasn’t prepared, based upon the federal government’s response early on. We “went to ground”: my husband, my brother, and me. It was crucially important: my brother was autistic and intellectually impaired, as I have noted in many blogs before, and he was seriously immunocompromised. He had an extraordinarily high tolerance to pain; a 10 for you might be a 2 for him. This was the guy who walked around and went about his business with a horrific case of Shingles once, taking only the occasional Tylenol. I worried that I would not know he was sick until it was critical.

It was pretty hard, right from the beginning; he had been so used to being a social creature, and I had to be quite firm with him to make him understand why he had to stay home. I may have chronicled his attempt to understand here; I’m too wiped out to look back. He took to using Facebook to hold live “Dance parties” to encourage and entertain his friends, because he desperately needed the human connection.

The months passed, and we would drive him to the bank when he needed money, and very occasionally, mask up with our pocket hand sanitizers, and get groceries. We were largely insulated in our rural, Pennsylvania county, until about October, when Covid began to spread from larger, metropolitan areas to our community. We mask-wearing, mandate-following people were also in a disproportionate minority, and we were harassed about it constantly. Super-spreader events, like Trump rallies and fundraisers at local VFWs and bars, did not help matters. There was nary a mask in sight at these gatherings, and as the case numbers rose and the deaths began happening, going out became both worrisome and an exercise in the most extreme measures of caution. We regretfully isolated my brother once again, during the most joyous, social time of the year. There would be no shopping or parties, no dancing, no family get-togethers. When the vaccines were released, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. My brother was terrified of needles, but on Christmas Eve, he went live on Facebook to talk about how excited he was to get his vaccine. It meant freedom for him, and not having to be afraid.

By 10:42am on December 28th, he was dead; his routine lab appointment on the 23rd is where we suspect he was exposed. He, in turn, exposed me, and I tested positive the day he died. My husband was negative, because he spent a large amount of time at work that weekend. My brother displayed barely a symptom: sniffles, some fatigue. That was it. That morning, he was basically unconscious; I roused him enough to test his blood sugar and he was able to respond to the paramedics. He coded enroute to the hospital, and his heart continued to stop every 5 minutes for 2 hours. His test was positive and his lungs were consumed. It was a horrific maelstrom of terror and confusion and sorrow. He did not have an advanced directive; I had to make the call. Who, at 45, has one? I felt my sanity bend and nearly snap. I have not been quite sane since. We did EVERYTHING right. And we were so close.

Everyone else has moved on. That is expected, after all. If it were me, responding to the death of a friend’s brother, I would have gone back to my routines and my life, too. The outpouring of love, kindness, and the hundreds of condolences bore me aloft, in those first bleak days, upon a soft cloud of compassion. I had a core group of friends around me for those first horrible weeks, but most of them have faded back into the woodwork of their lives, and I am pretty sure that many of them actively avoid me because I am such a downer. I don’t blame them at all; I cannot stand myself 95% of the time. That 5% that I can stand is who I am when Goose makes me laugh. Thankfully, he does that every day.

I spent the first few weeks bewildered, in shock, and sick. Now, the grief feels very fresh and yet, the lessons I have learned in therapy – to reach out, to trust that those who said they were here for me meant it – well, I’m failing those lessons because I don’t want to bother anyone.  And the brain fog, a lingering symptom that won’t abate, keeps me from talking much, because I sound like a stumbling idiot who forgets words and even whole phrases and who has to look up words to write sentences. It’s fucking embarassing for me, a writer who has always had the wonderful world of vocabulary at her fingertips.

I have to put a timer on to remind me that food is cooking, because dinner has burned one too many times; I completely forgot that I was cooking it. Laundry gets started, but then forgotten until 2 days later. I have things I want to tell people, but then, a week goes by, and I remember, and it’s no longer relevant. It’s terrifying and it also feels like a penance to be endured until all the wrongs in my life, ending with my brother’s death, are righted.

I received my second vaccination on Tuesday. It was a watershed moment. The trauma of the day Covid stole my brother from me lives on in my memory, refusing to dissipate. 2021 began, for me, with illness and a broken heart and a soul filled with rage. It began in isolation, with no comfort, or even a hug, for two weeks. Even now, I have had exactly one repeat visitor since December. I mean, I get it. I absolutely understand. I had the plague, and I am an open wound now. It’s best to avoid me. And I still don’t know how I feel about a total immersion back into daily life. I had no closure; my baby brother – who I swore an oath to protect when he was born when I was 8, and who loved and trusted me the most in the world, who I was rarely apart from – died alone, amongst strangers. I feel so hopelessly bereft when I think that he must have been so frightened, and that he must have wondered where his big sister was and why she had abandoned him to a reality of agony as he died, over and over. The thought of this haunts me nearly every moment of the day. I wasn’t allowed to hold his hand, or kiss his forehead.

Very few people really understand the bond between my brother and I. I was his sister, and I was also a maternal figure. We didn’t have much, growing up, but we had each other, and I can say, without any doubt, that I was the most important person in his life, and the one he loved the most. I felt the same way, that first, magical moment that I held him and counted his 5 day-old toes and wondered at the strength of his grip around my finger. It is almost like losing my own child. To a virus that could have, should have, been mitigated.

The very last contact I had with him that morning was to rub his arm, stroke his forehead, and say, “Charlie….buddy?…you’re gonna go for a ride in the ambulance, but everything’s gonna be okay.” This beautiful soul, the heart of my heart, went into the darkness not cradled by love and comfort, but by fear and violence and pain. There is no escape from this nightmare, except to join him. And yet, I know that’s my grief talking, and so I have my therapy appointments and I take my meds like an obedient child. I don’t want to join him. But I feel nothing. No joy. No hope. I feel gray. This is not depression, and it is not a symptom of my mental illness. It isn’t even a part of the PTSD that I have recently been diagnosed with; this is no shell shock. It is something deeper and darker than any sorrow that I have ever experienced. And I wonder if this is all there is. Because if it is, it is not acceptable or survivable; not for me. And it is unfair to the people who love me.

So, I don’t reach out, even when the sobs erupt from the black pit that is my center and I sink into a quiet despair, and wonder if anyone can tell that I’m dead inside. I hope not; I try to mask it. Who would want to have to deal with that kind of negativity? Not me. So I don’t bother with doing that to them. But, it is very lonely.

I am also very angry, and I would gladly see the world burn when my thoughts are blackest. I have survived COVID-19, but the unnecessary loss of my brother, who was absolutely the best of my mother’s two children, may be the thing that takes me down. I don’t want it to, but no one has come up with a plausible scenario where the sun shines and the wind blows through my hair and I think, life is beautiful – and I feel it. Everyone assures me that a day will come when I laugh more than I cry, that I will remember all the good without the horror of that day crashing through my consciousness. They promise me that there will be peace.

And so, I’m waiting.

Unfriend THIS

So I have kittens right now, who are learning to be independent, and teaching them is a never-ending source of amusement, anxiety, the fear of getting way too attached, and precious moments. Many hours are whiled away with a tiny fuzzball cuddling against my chest, or giggling while another fuzzball chews on the hair on […]

Unfriend THIS

Unfriend THIS

So I have kittens right now, who are learning to be independent, and teaching them is a never-ending source of amusement, anxiety, the fear of getting way too attached, and precious moments. Many hours are whiled away with a tiny fuzzball cuddling against my chest, or giggling while another fuzzball chews on the hair on the back of my head.

Kiko

Sully

I should be up, doing stuff, or out and about, but how do you put a precious baby down when they sigh and relax against you? Don’t get me started on how addictive their baby smells are. Bury your nose in a six-week-old kitten’s warm, fuzzy, vaguely pink tummy and inhale: there’s a very faint, almost indiscernible scent of pee, but then the warm fur/skin scent takes over, with a faint blush of cinnamon.

Intoxicating.

At least, until he or she latches onto your face with baby claws that barely know what their use is for.

Anyway, while I allow Sully or Kiko to use my dirtypillows as a soft bed, I scroll through Facebook and check out pages, or research ideas for home renovations, or read good articles (and blogs). Facebook is usually an exercise in self-control, because, as an old friend once said, opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one.

This is unfortunate, because invariably, one encounters dissenting opinions from that which one holds personally. However, when one delves into the black abyss of uneducated opinions, one risks becoming caught up in a fecund quagmire.

It often mystifies me that there are so many grown-ass adults who believe blatant bullshittery and refuse to educate themselves. Here are some recent statements I’ve read, just today:

“The coronavirus is just political B.S. and NOBODY is gonna make me get a vaccine.”

“Flu shots are LIVE VIRUSES they inject into you!”

“There are pieces of fetuses in vaccines.”

Okay. Unpack those. Yes, grown-ass adults made those claims. My first reaction was to say, “The fuck outta here with that” and unfriend, because honestly, it’s a friendship that has been peripheral, at best. We met at a job, this person left said job, and moved in with the first (of my association with them) of at least a dozen individuals they have been “truly in love with” over the past couple of years. I used to feel sorry for them – everyone deserves to be loved, right? – and so I hung in there, offering support and encouragement. At about #6 of their choice in life partner, I began to lose faith in their ability to pick a decent human being. You don’t know what to say to a person who obviously neither loves themself, nor has the ability to discern good from bad. You begin to see, as a casual observer, that this person’s life has been one trainwreck after another, mostly of their own making. You quiet your urge to shout, “Are you fucking serious???” when they introduce Mr or Ms (inserted here-because-while-I’m-certainly-an-asshole-I-am-not-that-asshole-who’s-going-to-out this-person-on-the-chance-that-they-may-read-this) Right (now). You continue to reply to their self-defeating posts with inspirational memes.

Seriously, the world does not give up enough gratitude for memes. They replace the need to come up with real words and often summarize how we’re feeling perfectly. Instead of replying with some lame comment we don’t feel, we can meme a bitch with fake affection.

Anyway, I really ought to unfriend. I guess I was looking for the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I guess I’ve found it, because 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗜𝗡 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗨𝗔𝗟 𝗙𝗨𝗖𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗙𝗨𝗖𝗞 is this shit about COVID-19 being “political bullshit?” Have I been wrong, all my life, in my voracious quest for knowledge about the history of the world and the scientific discoveries that have saved the human race from all things plague-like? I mean, is it all political bullshit: measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, whooping cough, chicken pox, et al?

Image courtesy of Never Stay Dead

I’m actually grinning as I write this because 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁.

I could have gone onto that post and replied, asking them where they went to school and if there was a history class or are they Scientologists who believe in the magic underpants, or if they were awake during a single history class throughout their education, or if they’ve ever fact-checked a single thing that, well, if it sounds like fuckery, it likely is, indeed, fuckery? I could have cited facts and articles from reputable sources, because SCIENCE.

I could have done any number of things that would have satisfied my desire to educate, to dispel rumors and blatant fallacies, to provide a moderate voice of reason. I didn’t, though; I didn’t use SCIENCE and try to educate. Know why?

Because my efforts would not have come from a sincere desire to persuade, or teach. They would have come from my desire to be right. Don’t get me wrong – I am right – but why do I need to attempt to prove that to people I really don’t know intimately and who I would definitely avoid, were they to approach me? Because even if they are the sweetest person in the world at work, they are, in fact, a Trump-loving, Confederate flag waving, ignorant, narcissistic, middle-aged dirtbag who has fucked more people in two years than possibly the entire population of some blink-and-you-missed-it town in Texas. I no longer feel compassion, or a sort of camaraderie (we self-loathers recognize our kind) with this person.

No, with that statement: “Flu shots are LIVE VIRUSES they inject into you,” my brain just shrugged in defeat. I didn’t even post “Read a book, you dim-watt doofus” or react with an angry emoji. I came here, instead, to write, while Sully snoozed on my dirtypillows and Goose looked on in disgust.

Next, I need to go find my Unfriend button, now that I’ve exorcised this particular demon. It’s almost time to feed the kittens, anyway.