The coronavirus is changing all of our lives in big ways and small ones. We’d like to hear how it’s affecting yours. What are your stories? We’d like to print as many as we have room for. Send them to Publisher Mike Hrycko at mhrycko@thedailyworld.com.
By Mardi Emard-Colburn
April 14th, 2020
Easter Sunday this year found me sitting alone, on my mother’s grave. It was a startlingly nice day weather-wise; unseasonably warm sun kept me feeling comfortable despite my tendency to always feel chilled. I had found my way to her grave out of both grief and a desperate need to escape my house. The graveyard sounded like the perfect place for effortless social distancing – there’s never a crowd to be found hanging around tombstones. The repetitive daily routine, lack of scenery changes, and my family’s non-stop presence was beginning to make me feel like the walls of my home were closing in on me and I was being buried alive. The claustrophobia was a daily threat hiding in the shadows – it knowingly haunted my waking hours, waiting for my strong denial to show the faintest hint of cracking. And so, to escape my own sense of life being thwarted, I went to visit a place where true death lay all around me.
Since we have been under quarantine for the current global pandemic, I wake every morning with deep anxiety lurking just on the fringes of my consciousness. Before I am even fully awake, the conveyor belt of thoughts starts churning through my brain: how many deaths happened over night? What’s the local number of cases going to be today? Do we have enough food to avoid going to the store for another three weeks? What will I do if my “at-risk” relatives fall ill? Is there enough ventilators at the local hospital to save our lives, should we end up needing them? Will I survive another week of home-schooling, without loosing my sanity or stunting my children’s academic progress? By the time even half of these thoughts have completed their journey, I am torn between my options for avoiding them. Do I viciously attack my day and drown the thoughts with constant busyness, or do I close my eyes and attempt to drift off into the slumber of denial? I usually desperately try to fall back asleep – which at current count has worked ZERO times. After an hour or two of failed attempts, I stumble out of bed – completely exhausted – much later than I ever really should.
Easter morning began the same way every other quarantine morning has, with the exception that I followed up my feeble roll out of bed with a valiant attempt at watching Easter church service on TV with my family. It felt weird and different, but it was nice to be going through the motions. There was no big family gathering and dinner to look forward to, so we lazily wound our way through the holiday hours until we could eat our own cozy dinner followed by festive cupcakes. Midway through the hours of silence and heartbreaking tedium of a holiday in isolation, my thoughts could no longer avoid the fact that my mother was absent from this strange world on a holiday she typically loved. On a whim, I grabbed a few stems of cut tulips I had on my dining room table and jumped into the car. Heading to the cemetery to put flowers on her grave seemed like a valid excuse for some much needed space. The irony of choosing to spend time in a graveyard as a means to distract me from thoughts of a lurking, life-threatening virus did not escape me; it somehow brought a wry smile to my face as I made myself cozy on the ground next to her headstone.
Thoughts of our own mortality tend to come with a side helping of uncomfortable feelings, particularly when one finds themselves mere inches from the remains of someone who was desperately loved while they walked upon this earth. On this particular occasion, I was struck by the fact that I had never before visited a cemetery while also feeling that my own life might be in imminent danger. Logically and statistically speaking, I know that this virus is not very likely to take my life. But despite this rationale, our current reality dictates that we must remain vigilant, aware, and on high alert – for own and others’ safety. For the first time in a long time, the world around us doesn’t feel safe. We have an invisible enemy, and we are all holding our breath waiting for a tidal wave of overwhelming illness to hit our communities – at this point never fully knowing if our daily disciplines are being successful at preventing its’ arrival. All the unknowns defy our mind’s ability to be able to compensate, make a plan, and cope. So I sat in the grass of my mother’s grave, contemplating this reality while imagining her being alive for an Easter filled with pandemic unknowns.
On the one hand, I was wistfully annoyed that she couldn’t just somehow miraculously be resurrected as a confirmation celebration of Easter’s spiritual significance. After all, the Bible says it happened for Lazarus; so why not her? On the other hand, I found myself feeling a solid sense of relief that she wasn’t alive to be seeing and experiencing the threat of corona virus surrounding us all. I’m thankful that I don’t have to worry about losing her to this illness, and that she doesn’t have to be dealing with the fear that those in the “at risk” age demographic are living with. As I twisted emotionally between these two extremes, I suddenly realized that right now … perhaps underneath it all … we are all in need of more resurrection in our lives.
Aren’t we craving it? Aren’t we all wishing that our pre-pandemic lives could come back to life, suddenly vibrant and vital again? Aren’t we all wishing that our sense of “normal” would just return to being as we previously knew it, filling us with life-assuring ease that we unknowingly took for granted? Don’t we long for the return of physical connection and affection – the resurrection of the ability to exchange a hug or a cordial handshake? Aren’t we already exhausted by grief over our lost celebrations and rites of passage, wishing we weren’t counting weeks and months of distance from so many people we desperately love?
We all need a resurrection. A resurrection of hope, a resurrection of feeling safe. A resurrection of connection and relationship … a restoration of normalcy.
After I had enjoyed two full hours of quiet reflection in the sun, I left my mother’s grave feeling thankful for all the things that will eventually inevitably rise up and fill our lives again. I’m grateful for a pandemic Easter reminder — that there’s lots of resurrection joy ahead of us.
