No return to normal

As I sat down to get my first vaccination, gut-churning guitar chords and Ozzy Osbourne’s nasal rant blasted a crowded former showroom floor.

Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” Classic. Spine-crushing. And somehow so apropos.

“Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?”

Gone are the days when we don’t see each other’s pain.

Among the twists of this pandemic, rising among the many fallacies, there is this: I can’t wait for a return to normal.

A return to what? Where, exactly?

I’m afraid there is no “normal” to return to. At first glance, it is understandable that this may be what we all desire. Returning to what we’ve known, or thought we could control, our familiar ways and even beliefs. In the past, many of us at least had some kind of roadmap for our lives. Even when expectations were dashed, some of us at least retained the capacity for agency, to act independently and make our own choices.

Looking more deeply at others’ experiences the past fourteen months, along with my own reflections, I see that much of this has been uprooted—or blown up. We cannot simply go back. Too much has shifted, and far too much is now at stake. Fill in the blanks with your own concern or reality: As with the adaptation among many professions to largely work remotely, a reverse thrust seems unlikely.

After a year when so many gross inequities have been exposed and calls for racial justice continue to grow, how regressive and painful would it be to go back in time? Those seismic eruptions are not finished.

If you haven’t lived or felt what amounts to a sea change, perhaps you’re holed up on a ranch the size of Rhode Island in say, Montana. (Or hanging with Ozzy in a bunker on Planet Gonzo? Or still waiting for your cuts of prime rib in a certain buffet line? Sorry, no more squirming- maggot allusions: Ba-da-boom!)

Some of this disconnect – you might call it traumatic distortion– shows itself in the emerging conversation about what is dubbed pandemic grief. Not that everyone has heard this phrase, or if they do, they might downplay it. There is fallout from a national trauma that is only beginning to unfold while the evidence (yes, data) comes in.

Already, a divide seems to be widening between those who avoid or won’t acknowledge what has taken place, and the millions of families and friends in substantial circles who have been impacted by a loved one’s loss.

The impact of a Covid-19 death, research suggests, is often pre-occupying and dysfunctional—more so than after so-called normal deaths. We may struggle in additional ways, such as with intense isolation, distress over being unable to accompany a dying loved one, and trying to meet other family members’ needs.
  
There’s also a new multiplier. For every person who has died from Covid-19, an estimated nine people are bereaved. Many of those are at risk for dealing with prolonged or complicated grief. “It’s a sticky, heavy grief that doesn’t yield to the passage of time,” said psychologist Robert Neimeyer, who recently surveyed more than 800 American adults who had lost a loved one to Covid.

If not responding to suffering is “normal,” please set me adrift from your island.

So many people have been living in a pressure cooker. Whether grinding it out every day as a once-heralded essential worker (note how that has changed), hurt by a closed business, or just sick of it all, it’s been a tough ride for most. I keep hearing from friends and relatives of lives transformed in toxic directions, of increasing anger over a dislodged career, or finding new people and forces to blame.

There’s also a growing awareness of the “years of life lost,” or the loss of opportunity that impacts not only families but communities with each Covid death. For any parent who has lost a child, under any scenario, making such a calculation is like spitting out a crushed tooth. In a collective sense, public health experts say it is far more vital to track the time we’ve lost to the pandemic, rather than lives in a statistical sense.

Suck it up: it is what it is.

Of course, some people refuse to hear any of this. What new mental health needs? they ask. We’ve always dealt with loss; just move on. Suck it up: it is what it is.

A recent provocative column called “The Grief Crisis is Coming” by author Allison Gilbert considered the toll of our national bereavement and ways society can address and perhaps better protect survivors. Could this be a “new normal?” I wondered. Yet scrolling through readers’ comments to suggestions such as creating a White House office of bereavement care, it wasn’t long before the naysayers emerged.

I’m kind of done with these divisions. Parting ways while attempting to stay grounded. I wish those on the other side the best and will continue moving forward.  

Yet I must wonder whether a reckoning will come.

Late last year, the Washington Post took a close, visceral look at how people were grieving during the pandemic.

The writer interviewed a woman who had lost her father and was planting a flag amidst a public display of thousands, with “Love U Forever” written on it. A day before, she had been to part of a neighboring state – which, unlike her community, had not been disproportionately impacted—and she felt as if nothing had happened there. No mask wearing; little social distancing.

“I said to myself, ‘Until you feel this pain, until you see this pain, you don’t know. Or you don’t care,’” she told the newspaper.

Gone are the days when we don’t see each other’s pain. If not responding is “normal,” please set me adrift from your island.

Limited are those days when others’ carelessness around this stuff ratchets up our anxieties. It is abnormal to be constantly immersed in a negative energy.

Dwindling are the days of distortion and lies. Sure, people will cling to their alt-realities and conspiracy channels. But I have to believe sunshine and truth will prevail.

Perhaps I’m just addled with Covid brain. Processing is slow and weeks fracture easily. But when not riding the “crazy train,” I can see change coming.