I still go to the post office every day. Sometimes just to get the mail from the PO Box other times to drop off packages with art that I sold. And even though I now get all my shipping labels online, so I don’t have to stand in line, I still usually get to see Wendy as I drop off my packages.
So far the only visible change at the post office was that Wendy, the postal clerk, was wearing rubber gloves.
But today as I walked through the short hallway to the front desk I saw the little stop signs and blue lines on the floor marking off 6-foot distances. There was a low table in front of the counter with the credit card machine and a bottle of hand sanitizer.
I laid my packages on the counter and Wendy smiled as she always does. “They’re going to put up a plexiglass divider”, she told me. And I could see how unhappy she was that it had come to that.
I felt my throat tighten and my face turning red as tears welled up in my eyes. I held them back till it got into the car.
“You’re crying,” Jon said and smiled sadly. Jon understands my tears. He says they’re just another way that I talk and I should never apologize for them.
Yesterday Veronica emailed me an article that I glanced at and decided not to read. It was about grieving for the losses that have already come with the realities of the Coronavirus. I did save the article because I knew I didn’t read just then because it touched something inside of me that I wasn’t ready to acknowledge.
Our next stop was the Co-op.
It’s where we’ve been doing all of our food shopping for the past couple of weeks. I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes before going in. There are four paid employees that have been keeping the Co-op running without the regular help of us volunteer members.
I walked past the boxes of food piled up in the aisle from the weekly delivery. I wanted so bad to help unpack them, to wash down the shelves or mop the floor. “We can’t get as much done without all the good help we’re used to,” Kelly said to me as if reading my mind.
I took out the glass jug from my bag and as I filled it with Kombucha I started to cry again. By now I knew it was useless, so I went to the bathroom to hide like I used to when I was a kid. I looked at myself in the mirror and told myself to “Stop!”
By the time we got home, I was feeling bad about crying at the Co-op. So I went back to apologize.
Stephanie was behind the register wiping down the counter and Kelly was stocking the bread shelf. When I told them why I was there, that I didn’t mean to bring my shit into the Co-op, that they had enough to deal with, Kelly told me she didn’t even know that I had been crying and anyway, she cries all the time.
Then Stephanie told me how she lost it right before coming to work when she got a text message saying that even though the school was closed they were still giving free lunch to the students.
Jon was right, I didn’t need to apologize for my tears. But I’m still glad I went back to the Co-op because I think I needed to make that personal connection with Kelly and Stephanie.
If my tears today were about grieving it was for the loss of my community. Of the ease of going into the post office and chatting with Wendy. Of shopping or working at the Co-op and making light conversation with the people, most of whom I know by sight, who I see there. Of sitting face to face with Mandy and Athena at the cafe and waving to Connie from the bookstore as she stops in to pick up her lunch.
There’s a really good chance that we’ll lose some of these things permanently and get some of them back. But this morning I wasn’t thinking of what might happen. I was feeling the loss of that moment.
So I came home and cried some more.
And when I was done crying I turned on my sewing machine and iron, cut up some more fabric and elastic and got to work sewing more face masks for The Mansion.
I totally get it.
My best friend Brenda and I text each other when “we lose it”. That’s what we call it when we cry. It’s good to cry.
I love that I can so relate to what you wrote about today because I feel the same way about our lovely community of Cambridge NY.
I wanted so badly to hug someone in pain today. But I couldn’t because of the possible presence of a tiny little evil genome. It’s enough to make anyone cry.
It makes this all so much harder.
It’s totally okay to feel bad during this very bad time.
I cry too, have had the thought of capturing my tears and “watering” my plants with them.
So many casual interactions that are no longer casual. Our way of life gone in a mere two weeks?
No hugs?
it’s a beautiful thought Sharon. And what you said is so true and deserving of tears.
Maria, our fire chief is telling us, “It’s okay to not feel okay about COVID-19.”
Yes. 🙂
My tears have resurfaced just reading your message. If we didn’t feel so deeply for each other and the earth, there wouldn’t be any cleansing tears.
I often feel that my tears help me to refocus and strengthen my resolve.
Thank you for sharing this. Please take care of yourself too.
So true Larua. A really lovely way to think of it.
I think we are all feeling it. At least I am. We can’t even mourn what we have already lost, let alone prepare for the losses to come. I have severe asthma and at high risk. I am usually upbeat and realize everyone is in danger — it’s not just me. But I had one very sobering late night when I confronted how unprepared I am to die — who sad I left so much unsaid in this life. Other times I don’t want to survive just to see someone else, someone young and healthy, die — because now I will feel they somehow died in my place.
And we can’t turn to our usual comforts — scrubbing floors at the co-op, casual conversations with those we see frequently where this THING is not hovering between us — a barrier whether plastic or not. I liked to go to the library and get a special book or video, or pick up a treat at the store.
Cry as much as you want. We all should. It is called for.
I’ve been trying not to think too far ahead Bonnie, which isn’t as you say always easy. And I’m seeing how those things I always thought of as “little” mean so much. Some of us are more at risk than others be we are all in this together and that is unusual.
❤️
After a good cry and always after funeral I lock my tissues in a ziplock bag and at some point put them in an outdoor bonfire and send the tears to heaven. I know there is a higher power there that receives them with patience and grace! ❤️
That is such a beautiful ceremony Cyndi.
Maria, you have deeply touched me… at a time I’ve never needed your virtual touch more.
The capacity for this virus to break us is a thing I’ve never experienced during my 71 years on this fragile Earth. I’ve survived a lot.
But when one of my adult sons, (a floor manager at our region’s largest commercial laundry, washing the sheets of several metro-area hospitals) told me he was ill & had a 102+ fever? I thought “I may be broken now. I am helpless.
“I have always been a survivor,” I told myself. “I have NOT lost my ‘60s’ hippie homesteading skills.”
Yet I felt myself cracking like a piece of hot marble dropped into a frozen Minnesota fish hole.
His fever started to break… but according to the guidelines, he still cannot be tested. His partner, who is a caregiver for a 93-year-old, does not “meet the guidelines.”
So then I read your post. I cried.
“Tears are talking too,” Jon said.
I now feel as if I’m a survivor again.
Thank you, Maria—and Jon too
I think what you described, that going to a scary and hopless place and coming back again is happening to so of us again and again Virginia. Best to your son and his partner and to you too.
I think what you described, that going to a scary and hopeless place and coming back again is happening to so of us again and again Virginia. Best to your son and his partner and to you too.