First time in a long time…

 It’s been a rough two years y’all.

All throughout the Covid pandemic so far, I haven’t really written. But today I find I’m looking for catharsis. I sit here and write as I wait for my Covid test to develop - and I examine my life.

First off, I frequently take a test to make sure I’m not giving my patients an opportunistic and potentially deadly virus - that’s new for me. When I got into the medical field I didn’t think there would ever come a day where this type of thing would be required. I thought (perhaps naively) that my only big concerns would be making sure my vaccines for hepatitis and TB were current. Not that I would be wearing a mask 9 hours a day and freaking out over every sore throat and headache. Worried that I might be Covid positive and asymptomatic and spread it to someone who could literally die because I didn’t know. There’s a source of  anxiety for you.

Second, in the last two years (and as recently as last night) I have lost three amazing, powerful, loving women in my life, and one man. My grandmother who lived her life in faith, love, and service. She also had expectations and judgements, and deep ties to her family who all loved her in their individual ways. She was a lifetime loss. My very best friend through high school and college lost her mother. Paula was season loss, she taught me to embrace the world around me - let it become part of me and I of it. And last night my bonus sister and brother lost their mother. She was fiery and self sufficient and fierce. Protective of herself and her children, she was a challenging woman with ALL of the opinions, and not afraid to share them. She showed me that you can be too much for some people, but you can still be you. And Bob. The one who looked at everyone as an individual, not seeking for what they could add to him, or his life, just acknowledging them as they are and loving them there.

This is a hard time - and not just for me, but for all of us. There are few people who have not been touched by anxiety, depression, loss, struggle, change, and sometimes even growth. Painful growth to be sure, but still growth. The tears are plentiful, the future unknown, friends and families separated and divided, work looks different, play looks different - and our world is changed.

And yet, it is the same. It’s strangely comforting to know that. 

Volcanoes still erupt, snow still falls, rains clean the air and sand swirl in the desert. Dung beetles still do their disgusting little roll, seven year olds still give their mothers grey hair (though maybe at a faster pace than before), and the internet is still fueled by videos of cats falling into bath tubs.

But my world is also less. Less brash, less curious, less diligent. But is this maybe the way it is supposed to go? Is loss the force to transition to a new phase? One where we are supposed to cultivate these qualities in a new generation? To prove out what we have learned from these teachers? I don’t know, and I’m not sure I’m qualified - but maybe that’s how they felt in the beginning too.