Continued Abnormalcy

We can all agree that 2020 is the worst episode of Punk'd ever, right? It's been a solid 5 months since the global pandemic hit the Northeastern US. And while our section of Pennsylvania is in a kinda green phase (closer to normal than red), our family takes this situation pretty seriously.

this is how we do groceries now?

We don't really go out, except to pick up food or medicine, or to walk the dog.

We did rent a vacation house for a week in Delaware last month, but even there, we just went to the beach and back. Brought all of our groceries with us. And we even had the house treated with vital oxide (don't ask) before we arrived. I still felt nervous using the silverware in the kitchen without washing it myself first.

 

When I watch TV, it's pretty much all pre-covid shows, and my brain thinks that everyone is standing too close and rude for not wearing a mask.

Clearly, my brain is having a challenging time adjusting to so many new realities:

The one where we can't go anywhere, hug anyone outside of our quaranteam (which for us, at least includes my parents), relax, put groceries away without disinfecting them, send our children to school or camp. Oh, also the allergies that give me a constant sore throat also send me into a panic every day.

The one where my children have a very VERY limited existence and can spend more than 7 consecutive hours talking to friends in one day. 

The one in which my dog wishes we would just leave already.

The one in which my phone never runs out of juice because, have I mentioned, I never go anywhere?

The one where we have a major presidential election in just a few short months and our choices are either Biden/Harris or a giant, loose, orange turd and his faithful nodder. 

The one where all I want to do is scream and yet, I cannot get out there and protest.

The one where one of my very closest friends of 27 years is not alive. This one is really the hardest of all to grasp. It's been 10 days since she embarked on the next part of her journey without the rest of us. What I've come to realize about the process of grief is that it's really a process of changing your expectation about the world. I expected her to always be there in my world, and she was. I still expect her to be there, and my instinct is to call her or text her because my brain still thinks she IS there. So grief is like installing a new program that changes your expectations and instincts. But my brain is not just a computer, and changing it hurts, it even makes me want to vomit. You know how when you sleep (thank you, ativan the wonder drug) you forget, and when you wake up, you remember and the remembering stings every time.

I keep thinking that there are ways I can comfort myself but they mostly involve chocolate/wine/saturated fats and none of them involve bringing her back, so they all just suck.

What even is this? It feels like the alternate reality of Back to the Future Part II. If only we had a Delorean or if we could get Sam from Quantum Leap to jump around (I'm thinking first we send him to 1619 to stop the birth of the TA slave trade, and go from there?).

Truly though, I can say my world has been rocked. I'm reverting back to the gratitude practice to help ground me. Let's see how many times a week (a month?) I can do it to help me find some calm.

Tonight I'm grateful to have finished a work project that I was feeling stuck on for the last few weeks and was due tomorrow. Curriculum to teach kids about friends. Couldn't have come at a more important time for me. Done.

I'm grateful that my dear, sweet friend heard my letter before she left this world. What a wonderful husband to have read it to her.

I'm grateful that we have fresh fruit and vegetables and coffee and milk and all the foods my children need. At night I can hear crickets and see fireflies outside. If I need a doctor, I can call one, and even have medicine sent right to my home. I sleep in a clean bed, and sometimes I even have time to watch a show on the telly.

I'm grateful for my sweet, soft puppers. I love to bury my nose in his little furry armpit and smooth his fluffy eyebrows. He's happiest when he's sitting on my lap getting belly rubs.

I'm grateful for our neighbors, especially those who have kids the same age as Z, so his kindergarten experience won't be a complete loss. I'm actually a little bit excited about him finally getting to spend some regular time in the presence of peers, even if it is in this bizarro universe where you go to virtual school at your neighbor's house.

I'm grateful for this space to help sort through my thoughts and get them out of my head.

BFF4EAE

On so many levels, I hate when people say someone lost their battle with cancer. First off, who lost? We did. The world lost. And if someone lost, then someone won. I refuse to give cancer the satisfaction of a win since in the end, the cancer is gone, too. And those rogue fucking cells have no ability to revel in the heartbreak they leave behind. 

All that being said, the world lost an incredible person today. The best person, in fact. And it really stings.

***

How many years counts as enough time to spend as someone’s friend? 5? 10? 25?

 

It seems to me that there is no amount of time that could ever be enough to share a friendship.

 

The memories of a 27 year friendship are endless: countless meals and cups of tea, hours and hours and hours of phone conversations (and polos), walks through the city, tears and worries shared, visits, sleepovers, meetups, messages, letters mailed, emails and texts sent, rides on the train, drives through 2 states, parties, drinks, pictures taken, hikes, adventures, theatre, new friends made, concerts, infertility struggles, pregnancies, miscarriages, births, parenting advice given, accomplishments celebrated, children’s videos watched over and over, and even diseases treated and survived.

 

And yet, there’s never enough time.

 

I look back on a 27 year friendship and know that we took advantage of the time we did have together. We talked, we laughed, we vented, we cried, we anguished over all of the unknowns of the future, knowing full well we had such little control over what was to come.

 

Still here we are. The moment is here. The one I’d pushed away because imagining it is like imagining yourself without a part of your body: it’s impossible.

 

I know that we are so lucky. Particularly, me. I have been so lucky, to have been given a friend who both sought my advice and gave yours honestly to me (even if I kept the clear glasses or went with the tacky pink and purple tie dye). You shared and listened. You always showed up. Always. Answered the phone or jumped on a train (okay, maybe you didn’t jump, but you got on it). A bris in a snowstorm or a bowling birthday party were just 2 states away.

 

Remember how we used to meet in WSP in the West Village?  We went to the pop shop or had lunch at café dojo, and then ran after Gwyneth Paltrow for an autograph when we spotted her minding her own business. Or when I’d come to Long Island and you picked me up from the train station in the Pontiac sunfire to go to the beach club and then listen to Rent or Les Mis in your room before I got back on the train to go home.  

 

Later, I wore my doc martens to see your dorm room on the quad (stepped in those damn ginkgo berries and spent forever pouring bleach on them cause I thought it was barf) and we’d go to smokey joes and pretend to be 21. We made mixtapes. We blew our hair dried straight and go to a random NYE party – who was that guy I kissed? in the burbs, right? – and we danced and whispered and giggled and were only a tiny bit hungover the next day.

 

Arms linked, we still met in the city, after college, before and with kids. We took any opportunity to steal a few hours together, catching up, telling the real stories, the important stuff about boyfriends turned husbands, and families (extended families) and friends (or juicier, non-friends), the lack of sleep or parenting trials of the moment. We shared recipes (I still think of you when I make the strawberry spinach salad and the puff pastry brie appetizer) and went out to eat with our husbands. We sat next to Bode Miller and Morgan Beck in the 11^th row at Book of Mormon, and stood in a giant stadium to see Beyonce fly through the air and we sang at the tops of our lungs.

 

Weddings – dress fittings and bachelorette weekends. Pregnancies and babies – so many memories that make me laugh looking back. No question our children were so wanted.

 

And unbelievably, we went through cancer together, me first, thinking I had been able to take it for the rest of us, and you after. I was so so angry when I got the news from Naph. We were both young and had so much more to do. Unsurprisingly, we both turned out to be sensitive in mind and body, with a list of treatment side effects a mile long. 

 

You made changes and took care of yourself and your family. You went back to school and realized your dreams of being an artist. In between the scans and the appointments and the markers and the fucking trials, you thrived. You played tennis. You made travel plans. You published a book! You wasted no time.

 

And in the meantime, we still made seeing each other a priority: lunch in the city or a sleepover at your new house, you could not have been a better friend to me. You were always someone I could trust with secrets, with fears, and to share in my joys, too. Friends who stand by your side for almost 3 decades are not easy to come by. Thank you for being an incredible friend to me. I hope I was able to provide some degree of support for these past 8 years, especially, on this roller coaster of uncertainty.   

I’m beyond grateful for the 27 years we’ve had. I’m furious for the years that were stolen from your girls and promise to do anything for them. I’ll share all of our memories (some will have to wait a few years though), saved letters, and show up for them. I’ll remind them how proud of them you are, on a field or on a stage, or as a friend, how endlessly you love them and that you wanted nothing more than to be with them always. I will make sure they know you would have done anything to see them into adulthood.

 

We were supposed to be glamping this week.

 

I miss you already.