A lot of my conversations these days touch on people who are no longer around.
Some died. An uncle was an early victim of covid-19. Two elderly, isolated friends lapsed into dementia and passed away.
We’ve also lost some who are still living which feels like another wrinkle or implication of the pandemic. Some folks acknowledged their true passions, as in what are we waiting for?, and moved away, retreating to the lush countryside or fleeing to square red states to be closer to family, often an ailing, estranged parent. Others stayed put but withdrew deep into themselves, rejecting human contact and embracing conspiracy, online lunacies that claim to explain the inexplicable, offering pseudo-scientific comfort, a way to make sense of a frightening world. I know of two divorces and many separations, lovers driven apart by didacticism, familes riven by too much togetherness.
Then there are the disappearances. One friend dropped abruptly from a monthly friend Zoom, just stopped coming, stopped responding to texts and quit their job. Several others seem to have lost the thread, lost that little bit of cynical skin that made us friends, and each conversation now seems like a rehash of grievances, repetitive rants about bad drivers or the nightmare of politics or the price of (groceries/gas/you-name-it).
Is there a positive here? Do we know ourselves and each other better now? Or are we just less willing to put up with the mediocre, the dissatisfying, the routine?
The world seems to be exploding with pent-up rage and also creativity and I don’t mean to trivialize but it feels like two outputs of raw, roiling, clawing energy.
Don’t despair, friends. We will get through this, but the road is uphill and we’ll need each other to prevail.
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