Grieving's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Welcome to Bummer Mountain

I’ve been freelancing this fall, some of the work is food styling on film sets. The TV & film industry returned to New York as soon as it could with ironclad COVID regulations in place. Think of it this way, we watched everything in 2020, we needed new stories and everyone needed money. PCR tests are required two days prior to arriving onset along with a rapid test everyday onset, ideally upon arrival. It’s very orderly. When I work it’s just for a few days, not for an entire shoot, so I am rarely in the world of daily COVID testing. The following happened for a job over a month ago. 

The call time was early, I woke up at 5 am. I stood in the bathroom with some crusty crud in my left eye and a little scratch in my throat. I showered the previous night  right before bed, a mistake with the AC on, but it was still September and still humid. My PCR from two days earlier was negative, but at this point, it was meaningless.

This little crust and scratchy twitch sent me spinning. These feelings, this body scan. Something about the hour, the early hour incited a paranoia, but paranoia doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I talked to myself in the bathroom mirror, it’s always the bathroom mirror, that confidant. I have COVID, and now I am knowingly taking it to a film set where I will contaminate everyone, close down this production and get people sick. My own Typhoid Mary coming to town. 

But I have to do this job, I need the money, I am the lead stylist. Am I really not going to work because there’s some gunk in my eye? And so the next 30 minutes I spiraled myself into a sweat. Am I falling prey to the propaganda, the overly cautious propaganda about not going to work at all if I don’t feel well at all? Am I really capable of feeling well at 5 am? Isn’t public health the responsibility of us all? How do I know this isn’t COVID without taking a test? And so the dance in my brain went while I washed my face, brushed my teeth, got dressed, made some coffee and shoved a few spoonfuls of yogurt into my mouth and packed the food and knives for set.

I was sweating as I drove to the studio. Is this the fourth time having COVID? Or is it perimenopause, my very vague companion? That’s been a thing, but I just got my period. This September is hot and humid, hurricane season a bit early, summer lingering longer, the average temperature of the earth rising. I parked my car, decided I would put my faith in the precautions, my N95 mask to be worn at all times inside and outside and getting tested right away. I talked to myself, still,  but this time to trust the process, because now there is a process. And when all else fails trust the mask. It worked before tests and vaccines. 

17 hours later and I’m telling my partner Vince about this, stopping mid-story because I couldn’t speak. 

He looks over to me—”What?” and I cry. Rather, I try not to and we all know that doesn’t work. It comes back, the intense weight of every morning two years ago trying to gauge every feeling my body had. Would I endanger my co-workers at the food pantry, along with the people we served? At that time, there were no tests, you were out for 10 days. Hell, at that time none of us really had access to health care. The goal was to not need any, period. A makeshift tent in the parking lot at Aqueduct Race Track where you could drive through for a swab up the nose was a godsend. Was I going to feed people or put them in harm’s way?

The casino at Aqueduct was open along with this testing tent in January 2021 where the people administering the swabs were so cold they duct-taped their medical gloves to their gowns to create a seal.

I keep wondering how the past few years have affected us, have affected me. I still don’t know. I just know the inability to breathe and speak came out of nowhere. My mornings spent quietly scanning my body before I headed out into a shutdown city are more than a fact, they’re a factor. I’m not better, I don’t know when or if that comes, And I know I’m lucky.

Negative rapid. No viral load. 

I often say we don’t know what has been taken from us, something beyond what is apparent. There is no visible damage when you walk down the street, nothing apparent to the naked eye. There are a lot of empty chairs at dinner tables, a lot of long COVIDs and brain fogs, people on the streets because they don’t have a place to live, people self-medicating because in the words of John Waters if you have a drug problem then you only have one problem. We don’t have a visible representation of what we’ve been through, a burned-out building or hole in the ground, something to slow our steps, tear up our eyes, take us away from our return to the grind to remember. 

The first time I saw a refrigerated morgue truck at Wyckoff Heights Hospital on the way to work in April 2020 I burst out in tears and made sure they dried up before I clocked in. That spring we stayed in our apartments, bombarded by the constant sounds of ambulances. Both the truck and sirens ephemera of a time past that wasn’t long ago and whose reverberations we solidly live within. Two things easily missed by the people who left town for higher waters, for second homes, places with yards and space, some of them purchased sight unseen in the biggest scarcity scramble of their affluent lives. 

I don’t hate rich people. I know they are dangerous because they only see what’s in front of them and what’s in front of them has little to do with so many of our lives. Their wealth cocoons and protects them. They have more power over our lives than we do over theirs. Their blind spots are dangerous because they affect our lives through policy, leadership, and attention. We live according to their wants, not our needs. Their ignorance and insistence of moving on, making up for lost time, getting back to normal, means we are not taking care of the people and conditions that arose out of the past few years because they don’t see it. Or don’t care. The system is working great.

I thought when I left the food pantry I wouldn’t spontaneously cry anymore. 

What a fool.

I hate writing this, it’s too personal, too vulnerable. But expression, human expression, it’s the only way we’re going to make it. It opens us up, takes us out of our own tunnel vision. There’s a nature to this pandemic that confuses me, how we have worked with each other and grieved together almost invisibly, and then how we grieve so silently and individually. Perhaps this is the utter dichotomy of grief itself,  how we can do it with others, but ultimately if we don’t figure it out on our own, allow ourselves to experience/feel/witness (not sure which verb goes with grief, I usually use the word “brutal”), we’ll never get through it. Although I know that grief never ends, it evolves.

And this is something I am having a hard time getting past. How our grief, our hunger, our cold, our needs, falls on deaf ears that insist “we are back.” COVID is a part of life, and it’s not that bad anymore, man. What I know for sure is that one of the most dangerous things to humans is isolation. There is a difference between being alone, which, I love being alone, and isolation. Isolation tells us that no one cares, it confirms the voices in our heads that yeah, we are invisible and people are better off without us. It separates us and makes us vulnerable to many dangerous things. Grief often feels like an island.

I don’t want to write about this, I don’t want to feel like I’m living in the past. Here’s the thing though, it’s not the past, it’s now. This grief, what seemed a memory, is active and very present in my body. It demands something from me, so I’m writing this. Maybe this will shut it up for a while. I doubt it. I’m willing to make the mistakes along the way.