Dear COVID-19

Dear COVID-19,

Are you enjoying the view of global death and destruction as we scramble and work like Trojans to save one life out of billions? Without question you have succeeded in creating so much anger and sadness by what you have descended upon us. Or is it actually what we have created? Another conversation perhaps. We know that you are cruel, unrelenting, deceptive and evil; that you are able to grind the host like a pestle to mortar and that your entire MO is to win—to kill and force us into surrender with your haunted house of physical horrors. But as the old folks used to say, “I’ve got a flash for you.” While so many, too many, have succumbed to your grip, there are many more who will fight you with their last breath. One of my dearest and most beloved friends swore this to me in a text today, after five days of fever burning between 102-104 and being tossed around all night long like a lifeless ragdoll. This is what he wrote:

                             “...I am going to beat this Mother Fucking douche of an illness if it fucking kills me.”

I believe he will beat it. The night before, he wrote me at 2AM that he didn’t know if he could take much more. Make no mistake, we are FIGHTING YOU!

We are fighting, we keep moving and trying to stay productive; whether on top of one another or oceans apart. We are trying to stay connected to anything although you would have us miles apart, especially while dying. We have endless conversations that rise and fall revolving around “what the hell are we going to do?!” Conversations about work, about making money so we can pay our bills, about keeping the steady stream of food and diapers coming in, and about paying for our kids’ continuing college education. And then of course what will that look like? College. What will college look like for our kids on the other side of this Bird Box time? Indeed, what will it ALL look like after: The Day After. As my oldest daughter sings her heart out in our basement for her virtual voice lesson, what will remain germane? Grateful to have a basement by the way. Grateful to reside in a structure which protects us from the elements and makes us feel comfortable  and safe. Yet, despite comfort and some privilege, we’re all smack dab in the middle of a real life movie that a few weeks ago we were searching to find on Netflix. Some of us are still searching for it; those unaware or unwilling to move past their small selfish lives finding it impossible to heed the call for a collective humanity revolution or evolution. What would Anne Frank have to say about our exhaustion over a few weeks of remaining indoors. 

Half of me wants to rant about the MFs in this morally bankrupt administration, as well as all of the friends who choose to be too cowardly to call out three years of despicable, racist and plain old gross behavior and by default become complicit in their obsession with silence and denial.  And no “Amen” for the church goers and religious zealots who believe their “pass” of immunity and protection begins before the pearly gates will open up for them. Big mistake. The “spring breakers”, the Supreme Court sitters with blood soaked robes who voted that Wisconsin should walk straight into the mouth of the virus with eyes wide open because re-elections are definitely more important than lives in this “great” country of ours. And for black folks always dismissed and discarded, red lined and psychologically manipulated to believe that we actually matter while we stagger around with the virus in our diabetic lungs and red laser dots aimed on our backs. We are gasping disproportionately for H2O on hospital hallway gurneys and being Africa’s new guinea pigs for the vaccine. But the truth is that such a rant doesn’t pay off nearly enough and instead, on top of everything else, leaves me with three square meals of daily fatigue and months of quarantined sleepless nights.

The other half of me wants to linger in my mind to roam through virtual fields of fragrant lavender, remain ignorant of news feeds and ascending steep curves to stay in my home and fade away. To revisit poetry about romance and wax philosophically that all will be well and even more enlightened and embracing than before. Hmmm. We shall see…

I find I sit lodged with a need to exist somewhere in between. Not foggy about my politics or social issues, but simply walking through the daily life of it: both mundane and staggering. This place is limbo and I don’t think I find myself in a unique and unnatural position. In fact, I think it’s where most of us are; constantly swinging from one extreme of feeling, thinking and guessing to the other. At times we find a momentary sweet spot that lulls us with a reprieve from what’s just beyond our gloved hands and masked faces. Then in an instant of a strong cough, a sneeze that doesn’t make it to the elbow or the update about thousands of new cases we return to the endless stories about those being utterly terrified to go to sleep alone for fear of not waking up, signalling that we find ourselves right back where we were—in a state comprised mostly of fears and uncertainties.

However, humans by nature don’t give up life easily. And so we’ll continue to be angry, cry inside for the way our frontline soldiers work selflessly like thieves in the night to save one soul, to continue at times to feel adrift, to thank the heavens for Netflix, to keep eating because Francesca Melandri said so, and to hug our children—whether two or twenty-two—a bit longer while searching their eyes for signs that they too are breaking. We will continue to make shopping lists, root for Chris Cuomo, be encouraged by a real leader like his brother Andrew as he holds NY together if only by a thread, keep reprimanding our elders with love to stay out of churches, hope that humanity and kindness will miraculously find those less fortunate to be led to higher ground and through all of this we will work.

My father used to say, “Your work will save you.” That’s what most of us are doing; either on the front lines or the garbage collectors still collecting our garbage just outside our windows, men and women fighting our fires, or on Zoom calls in our bedrooms. Most of us are about the work of truly turning lemons into lemonade and frantically creating and recreating ourselves to be ready. We’re finding a way through and upward. We are working harder than ever and will continue to work harder than that, even when this shadow has eventually moved on and we’re left to make sense of the senseless, the damage, and our future. I’m putting a lot of stock in what my father used to say and sincerely hope that our work, and our humanity, will save us.

 Regardless of what COVID-19, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

More sincerely than you’ll ever know,

AW