Insanity and Grief Meet the New Ordinary: In Five Acts
Open. No, Closed. Open. Noooo, Closed!
Act 1
Open, close, open again, close — encouraged by a promise of an opening, hope emerges, the desire to move on, takes hold, hearing about a potential closing means more isolation, while hope disintegrates and the five acts begin again. Anger, rage, grief, and confusion emerge with greater voracity as you dream to reemerge with all of this behind you.
What’s a Pandemic? Not us! Hmm? This could be fun or not.
Curiosity brewed as COVID cases popped up in certain parts of the U.S. It crept in from the periphery. Creeping and leaping. Reporting increased, yet was filtered with a strong sense of denial and ambivalence and ignorance,” I won’t have to worry, not me, not my family. What’s a short shut down? We are strong and resilient. This is a little insane, I hope I don’t go insane during these two weeks.” Many cite Tom Hanks and the surprising shutdown of the NBA as defining moments when denial turned to dread and the realization that the Corona Virus was more serious than initially thought.
Then everything shut down.
At this point, the fortunate few, had the means, financially and emotionally, to cope with the unpredictable weeks ahead. Or so they thought. They could bide their time. While others with less of an emotional and financial cushion, were in stark realization of being unprepared for this unprecedented time, and began rationing what resources they had. Gathering, joining, finding others to share the burgeoning dismal picture, they could still access resources in many of the same places they had previous to the pandemic. Burdened by no cushion and little or no support, there were folks whose complete lack of resources left them cushionless, afraid, and grief stricken.
What we, the big “We” of this country, did not realize was the degree to which we would share the sense of fear and grief as an overlay to even the most fortunate of folks. There were no more than 6 degrees of separation between someone who was virus free and someone who was hospitalized or worse, died.
During those first few weeks a vein of optimism continued to brew among many while others were being slammed by the early losses where entire families were wiped out and it sounded like:
“This isn’t too bad. Did you hear about how contagious this is? Where is it safe to be? What’s the truth? OK, I have enough money to survive, for a few weeks…or maybe even a month.” Then it all changed in Act 2…
