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This is the impromptu evolving memorial for George Floyd, who was murdered by a police officer in full view of a gathered crowd a week ago.   It has since been referred to as a sacred place, and I think I know why  It goes far beyond the death of  one man.  Those who point to ways in which his behavior was not perfect miss the point of why people are sanctifying the place he died. In a way, this isn’t even about him. Years from now, it may be hard for many to recall his name.

They will remember that horrific image of the officer with his knee to a man’s neck as  he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe, and maybe remember how a man in his forties called for his mother  with his  last strength to cry out. But most important, they will remember what broke in them that day, and  what new revelations came pouring out.   That is what renders this place sacred.

Most definitions of “sacred” are related to specific religious traditions, but Satish Kumar, former monk, peace and environmental activist, goes beyond that. He says that a place important to a community can aid us in reaching out to something bigger than that community—something  divine, however one may understand that. A sacred place, therefore, is one that draws individuals into a commonality that fosters, to use a  hackneyed phrase, a vision of the bigger picture.

I said earlier that this isn’t about George Floyd.  I didn’t mean to minimize  the fact that a particular human being died. It is certainly about George Floyd for George Floyd and his family. But  Floyd’s death is really about all of those countless hearts and minds that saw as a result of his death what it means to live without privilege in an America that has been sold to us as exceptional.  In this idealized America, everyone is privileged.  This  America is good enough the way it is. This America is threatened and confused by demands that it do more than tinker at the edges to make it better. With his death, important ideals that privileged Americans like myself  comfortably espouse as being “the American Way” collide head on with other Americans’ reality in a manner that, once seen, cannot be unseen. This new vision requires action in order to continue to live wth integrity.

This divine spark  tells us to rise up, that we are bigger and better than the lives we have been living.  Resistance to this change will be swift, enduring, and brutal.  No one ever said a life lived with integrity will be without its challenges and losses. A sacred place marking such a painful time can serve as a way of remembering to stay strong because  the change will be worth it.

One has to earn  the privilege of laying flowers on this site.  Whether the crowds at protests  will ever visit the spot that generated this awakening,  it is sacred to them  Sacred to us.  Sacred to me.

 

My ex-husband was clinically diagnosed as a “borderline narcissist” many years ago while we were still married.  His reaction?

“Borderline?  Borderline???”

If he were going to be something, he wanted to be the biggest, baddest, most flamboyant member of the club.  He laughingly feigned insult, never once appearing to grasp that being diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder was something he might want to look into. He thought the whole thing was a big joke, and of course all of his jokes were funny.  Unless of course you had no sense of humor.  And really, didn’t that indicate you were the one who ought to be getting the help?

I don’t talk about my first marriage much because I am embarrassed to admit that the self-confident and highly functioning person I believe I project myself to be got so badly lost and behaved as stupidly as I did. Some of you might want to argue with me about how I am being too hard on myself, but don’t. Even if you knew me then, you didn’t know what  was going on in my marriage because I know how hard I was working to keep it from you.  I was keeping it from myself for the most part too, and when I had glimmers of how bad things were, I was too ashamed to say anything to anyone.

I had never heard the term “gaslighting” at the time, although I spent years spinning in the orbit of a master. You’ve already read one example.  If I protested his behavior, I was the one who really needed help.  I was the one who “used to be fun.” I was the one whose own shortcomings were what we really should be talking about. I was the one who was doing what I was falsely accusing him of.  Classic. All of it.

Inhabiting the White House today is one of the most flagrant examples of a full-blown narcissist ever.  If you haven’t seen narcissism in action, it is hard to understand why he acts the way he does.  If you have, you can see with nauseating clarity.

First, a caveat.  I am not a psychologist, and in fact the only course I ever failed in college was Intro to Psych.  It was the spring of 1969 and the university was on strike, and I was spending most of my time protesting with this really cute guy….. well, I digress. My point is that all I have to go on are my personal observations of patterns of behavior, and I can vouch for how much  my ex-husband and the current US president have in common.

“Normal” people, and I consider myself one, try to understand the feelings and thought processes of others  by analogy to their own.  If they would be embarrassed by a certain behavior, they assume other people would be too. If someone else didn’t seem to be, he or she must be secretly ashamed, or maybe in active denial.  This is often valid, and our ability to see each other in this fashion is part of maintaining relationships and nurturing our own mental health.  When it comes to understanding narcissists,  making such analogies is our first, and most persistent mistake. 

We are all the centers of our own worlds.  The difference is that a narcissist truly believes he or she is rightfully the center of everyone else’s world too and that there is something terribly, fundamentally wrong when others don’t behave accordingly.  Narcissists will do whatever it takes to bring back into line offenders against the proper order of things. They lie, they gaslight, they bully.  They try to ruin and destroy offenders however they can. Often they succeed.  I suspect they never actually believe they will lose any battle with other people, because that simply is the wrong outcome. Any situation is unfair if it isn’t radically skewed toward what they want, and anyone who isn’t utterly devoted to their desired outcome deserves to be reviled. They are supposed to go through life unimpeded and they just have to pull out all the stops sometimes to make this happen.Makes perfect sense to them.

I got to thinking about this because of a post I read from someone who thought the president might be, whether consciously or not,  flirting with getting Covid 19 because it would give him an off-ramp if his chances for re-election got too dismal. The most extreme form of this would be to die without ever facing accountability for all those things he doesn’t think he’s accountable for. A less extreme form would be simply not to subject himself to a vote in November by claiming his health prevented him from continuing in office.

No. No. No. This is not the way narcissists think. They are not defeatists. Why should they be?  They attack, and wait for the world  to right itself  in their favor because they believe it inevitably will.

The president is facing  open and widespread rebellion against his view of himself and his rightful place in the world at a level of insult he could hardly have imagined back in his real estate and celebrity host days, when the most a “loser” could do is fling a few choice words on the way out the door.

To wander far afield for an analogy, Godzilla went on his rampage because of confusion, fear, and anger about finding himself in an unfamiliar environment  he didn’t understand.  The president similarly found himself  in new territory when he unexpectedly won in 2016,   and he has rampaged accordingly from the moment he realized he wouldn’t have a free ride in office.  We should not expect from a narcissist any more self-reflection, or glimmers of realization that other lives than his own have meaning, than we would from Godzilla. If  you want to understand or predict the incumbent president, better to ask “what would Godzilla do?”  than “what would I do?” This may sound like a joke but it isn’t far off the mark.  

And by the way, he won’t get Covid 19 because Covid 19 wouldn’t dare. And if he did, he wouldn’t die or even get terribly sick because that kind of thing only happens to people who don’t matter. Suckers.  Losers.   

Here, based on bitter experience, is what I think lies ahead for us.  First, he will do anything to win the 2020 election.  Anything.  Because that is what is supposed to happen.  Second, he will continue to believe he is going to win the election, despite polls or any other indications to the contrary.  Third, he will be stunned if he doesn’t win, and he will not accept the results because it is not possible for his efforts to have failed, or for a process to be fair if it doesn’t not favor him.  Fourth anything bad that happens will be entirely the fault of others, and fifth, he will believe absolutely and unequivocally, that the right response to a “fake” loss is to do whatever it takes to remain president, because that’s what’s supposed to happen.

And that’s if he loses. If he wins, that will simply be proof to him that he is right, always, about everything, and that punishment is appropriate for anyone who dared disturb the universe by crossing him.

My personal story is small, limited to one marriage, and it was in my hands to solve it by divorce when I woke up.  Our national one feels more like Godzilla with the cameras still rolling.

In 2014 my fifth book, The Mapmaker’s Daughter, came out, and I was thoroughly done with it all. Though it is one of life’s big thrills to hold a book in your hands that has your name on the cover, I was exhausted by the whole process, disheartened by the difficulties of getting any real recognition by my publishers, and absolutely nauseated by the idea of going through the whole process again.

In between the time I finished the manuscript of Mapmaker and the date it came out, my life had been turned upside down. My husband Jim died, and to my surprise, within a year I had met Dan, the man I am still partnered with today. I could see, from the perspective of  elapsed time,  how all-absorbing writing a novel is, and could recognize that one of the main reasons I was able to publish five  books between 2008 and 2014 was that Jim and I were both in constant overdrive together, he to produce his legacy papers on metaloproteins in molecular biochemistry, and me to wrestle these four ideas for novels out of my head and into print. We worked like dogs all the time and it was perfect.

When Jim died, there would have been nothing to stop me from continuing working in the  driven way I had been, except for my disinclination to do it.  When I started having a more normal social life, centered around friends and boyfriend, I realized how untenable it would be to embrace that all-encompassing state of mind it takes to birth a novel. Sure, I had ideas all the time—dozens in a year— but not a single one passed this simple test: Is it worth it to give over my life to this?  The answer was always no.  Writing a novel places a huge strain on relationships as well as  health, and I just wasn’t interested in that trade off.  Maybe I might have been, if an idea was giving me that electric sensation that Diane Ackerman has described as “ coming down with a book,” but nothing was.  I got immense pleasure about thinking what the plot, the characters, the voice would be for any number of ideas for novels, and then I would set it all aside because that pleasure was enough, and I liked my life the way it was.

And there I left it until 2020. Shortly after I got back from what I hope won’t be my last cruise assignment ever, Dan and I watched a documentary on Alfred Loomis, a Wall Street tycoon turned physicist who was central to the development of technologies like radar that helped the Allies win World War II.  I love the history of science enough to have written a novel, Finding Emilie, about a brilliant but largely forgotten female physicist in the French Enlightenment, so I was following the documentary with a typical level of interest until it got to the part about how this very dignified and proper gentleman scientist becomes besotted with  the wife of one of his scientific collaborators, and they begin a secret affair. The story takes another turn when he tries to have his wife committed to clear the way to marry his lover. His children prevent this so, shockingly at the time, he gets a divorce  from wife one and marries wife two, after which they live a happy and peaceful life for several decades until his death.

I found this story enthralling because here is this man of extraordinary substance caught up in the simplest and yet most complex of emotions—love—and wanting to keep his life intact but still be able to be with the woman he knows he is meant to be with. He knows that a scandal could upend work essential to winning the war, so he and his lover decide to live side by side in their respective marriages for over a decade, and successfully keep their affair a secret. So many layers, so much hurt, so much deception, so much at stake.

And there it is—the story that got me.  But what put me over the top is that it is crying out to be a stage play, not a novel.  I’ve never written a play, and it’s a new challenge to have only two means to convey everything—body language and dialogue. It’s a challenge to have at the most two hours to tell the whole story. It will be a new experience to have the end product not something I send off to my agent, but something that will see the light of day live on stage.  Though my chances of having a major production are about as good as having a best selling novel, even small staged readings will let me see my work realized. There is no specific outcome I require to make me feel it was worth the effort. It’s the creativity and learning that matters at an age where I have nothing left  to prove, and care only about continuing to grow.

I eased into this project, thinking in terms of IF I would take it on.  I said nothing about it even to friends and fellow writers because—and this may sound odd—I  didn’t want to be burdened with their encouragement.  I don’t want ever to feel that I owe this play to anyone, including myself.

Today  I finished the first draft of the first act, about a half an hour running time.  It’s rough but it’s there.  My play now officially exists as a work in progress. But I am a completely different writer than I was. I tiptoe around my computer warily, not wanting to get too sucked in.  I don’t wake up dying to go to work to see what happens next. But when I do sit down for a little while every day, I feel the old thrill of characters’ lives spilling out in what they say and do, and I know I am right where I should be right now.  “Thank you for waiting,” I say to the Muse, and she smiles.

Since this pandemic began, I have kept a to-do list on my refrigerator door, reminding me of a basic framework I want to have for these endless, formless days.  I have replaced the list several times as I have come to know myself better.

The first list represented an  old version of me that, in the best analogy I can think of,  was like the clothes at the back of the closet that are never going to fit right again.  To continue the analogy a little further, there are newer versions of the list  that I recognize as “early pandemic me.” These are like clothes that still look good but I don’t feel like wearing.  Then there is the ever-changing “today me,” which in clothing terms ranges from shapeless comfort to “pretend life is normal” wear.

I make no apologies for ignoring any phantom presence suggesting what I ought to do at this point, any more than I think I need to justify  why today bare feet, old shorts, nice sleeveless blouse—and of course (the only invariable) cute earrings—feel like the right sartorial plan.

But back to the lists.  Geez, I am easily sidetracked these days.  I have a two-day-old list on my fridge that seems to make sense, as long as I don’t have to get all crazy about slavishly following it. Here it is:

Share Something

Build on Something

Nurture Something

Learn Something

Clean Something

Exercise Something

I can share anything— from inviting Dan for dinner to an interesting article in the news.  Building on something is so wide open it is fun to think about.  I can build on an idea I have had for a piece of writing, or just make a little progress on a jigsaw puzzle.  I can nurture a friendship by calling or writing a friend, or by taking food to the park for the birds.  And how could I possibly make it through a day without learning anything?  Ugh!  What kind of a life is that?

What I like about this list is that  I naturally want to do these things.There’s just enough of a hint about laying the groundwork for a more interesting and open tomorrow,  without the pressure to work on it as if life is a job. I can come out of this with renewed friendships, new ideas for projects, and a sense of well being.  All of this can happen if I do the little somethings  that matter to me.

And, just as a little aside, my condo is spotless.  I even washed the windows this week!  Since I am here all the time, I notice dust so much more, and why not do something about it? Exercising means getting down on the floor for some stretches and crunches, and whoa!  I was shocked at how many dust bunnies lived under the couch.  No more—nurturing does have its limits, and when I start talking to dust bunnies as if they were  pets, the top item on my next list will be doing something to restore my sanity. 

I read an article today that asked about sequestering at home, “What do you miss most right now?”

Think  fast!

What pops up first before second guessing pushes the mind toward what our self editor thinks the answers should be?

My answer?  I miss freedom of movement. Or more specifically, I miss options. I miss having a range of things to do with my time that involve being out and about in the world.

I assumed this might be what others would say, but my friend Tina told me the answer for her was hugging her family. She aches with this sense of withdrawal from what grounds her. So do I, but for something quite different.

I think our answers say a lot about who we fundamentally are. Tina’s happiness is so thoroughly enmeshed with her family that it is hard even to drag her out to lunch with the girls. When it conflicts with a chance to help out with day care for a grandchild, she is out of town in a cloud of dust. She  can tell you the exact date on which she last hugged her son.  I am so ready to rejoice with her when she can do that again, and sad that day has yet to arrive, but it isn’t my answer.

I actually have more phone contact with my son Ivan than any time since  long before the invention of FaceTime. Since we live too far apart to hug, even when sequestering is over there won’t be much of an opportunity for getting together in person.  I think this  is a by product of something else about both of us, that flying solo is completely within our comfort zone.  Maybe the time will come when we think living in proximity is worth planning life around, but that time has not arrived, and I suspect we both hope to be lucky enough that it won’t—unless of course it involves grandchildren, which  neither of us  foresees.  Then  all bets are off!

But that isn’t what I  planned to write about.  My blog posts rarely are, by the way.  I got to thinking about how missing freedom of movement is really about wanderlust writ small.  I guess I have  lived travelly on a small scale much of my life by virtue of the fact that I have had transportation,  money, and time to fulfill many of my desires in my immediate world.  If I want stimulation I have options; if I want diversion, I have options; if I want escape I have options.

I don’t think I ever thought about living travelly on a small scale before because I have always been pursuing writing it large.  Now, I am thinking of  seeing a movie or an al fresco lunch with a friend as an adventure.   Going to the Apple store to fix my iPad’s sticky keyboard is going to be an adventure, as are working out at the gym and playing tennis.  Hello, muscles!  I am really starting to miss you!

Yes, I greatly miss the freedom of options. It doesn’t make me angry, or depressed, or resentful(at least not often), as it might if my options were considerably narrower.  I have electricity, I have a ride to the store, I am in touch with friends.  Most of all, I and those I love are all still well— not exactly an option but a simple fact that is shaping my life for the better at the moment.

I hope I will be better able to treasure living travelly in all its sizes when sequestering is over, and for now to appreciate the smallest options of all, even if it is just what to fix for lunch, which wine to open, or which window to stare  out of  (one choice here, showing research I am not doing) while I go on the best adventures of all—the ones in my head.

Efficacy is defined most simply as “the ability to produce a desired or intended result.”  When this home quarantine began over a month ago, I assumed I wanted the same results I have  always  expected of myself—to use my time to produce something useful, concrete, and hopefully of some lasting value.  I take it as a given that my best way to thank this beautiful world that has blessed me so greatly is to continue earning my keep.

I even wrote about it in an earlier post, announcing how I would productively use my time. I realize now that was a display of unwarranted  over-confidence. I still have on my fridge  a list of the commitments I made about how I would spend at least one hour every day: Creativity, Reaching Out, Exercise, Life Maintenance, and Recreation. These quickly became more guidelines than hard-and-fast rules, though I still find a day that includes all of them feels better than one that doesn’t.

Today I saw online a much better list, reflecting how life really feels right now.  Here it is.

 

I’m not sure I am motivated enough to do all of these, and really, it should morph into my personal list anyway. What is of value here is the reflection of how far I have come from the person I was before all this.  Not one thing on this list is geared to producing anything with a future.  I’m not building anything. I’m not projecting anything concrete. It’s about silencing the lifelong internal narrative and allowing myself to just be, allowing myself to think only of the kinds of activities that make today, and maybe the next few days, a little more serene. Let anything long-term go for now.

A few days ago, I moved my rather worn but comfortable desk chair outside to take in a beautiful sunny afternoon. When I went in, I decided to just leave it there. After all,  I  wasn’t really using the desk for much of anything except a bigger computer screen from time to time  It wasn’t  like I was developing lectures for a cruise any time soon, or doing any writing or research.  And that is how things happily will remain, with a super-comfortable place to relax outside and an underused dining room chair at the desk, just in case I get the urge to….well, I don’t know what.

I didn’t put any significance on this little logistical change until today, when I realized how well it symbolizes the change in outlook this pandemic is facilitating.  The desk chair on the balcony is an encapsulation of the spirit of this new list.  Forget the desk.  Enjoy the sun.  Say yes.

Aspirational. I’m not there yet, but hear the whispers.

 

In my travels, I  missed several experiences I had hoped for. I had overnight flights that caused me to miss seeing the Andes and the Amazon Basin from the air.  “Sorry you can’t see Mount Everest at all today,” the captain said, when my friend Susan and I flew from Bhutan to Kolkata over the Himalayas, with the jagged tops  of a few peaks (shown here)  the only differentiation from the clouds socking in most of the landscape.

Fog or rain kept me from seeing the picture-postcard versions of some places on my dream list.  The giant Buddha looming over Lantau Island in Hong Kong was so fogged in I could see only its outline from the Po Lin monastery below.  A mountaintop in Bhutan, where on a clear day we could have seen the Himalayas in the distance, was socked in so utterly we could see only a few meters in front of our noses. The day I wanted to show my friend Linda some of my favorite spots in Riga, Latvia, we ended up sheltering (sort of) in a relentless downpour that changed our day into something utterly different than I had hoped for.

A few of these missed experiences led to something more mystical than what I had hoped for.  The Alps or the Sahara  Desert have lain below me as I flew, calling me through the darkness without revealing themselves, tantalizing me with an experience they would not let me have.

In the summer of 2000  I was at a very fragile point in my life, having lost my son Adriano to suicide at age 22 less than a year before.  In the letter he left behind, he talked about how he hoped death would liberate him to go surf the universe.  I took some of his ashes with me when I took the Norwegian coastal steamer on a research trip from Bergen to Kirkenes on the Russian border at the top of Scandinavia. My plan was to scatter the ashes at Nordkapp, the symbolic, if not actual, northernmost inhabited place in the world.   I had read that the glow of the Aurora Borealis is caused by light reflecting off dust in the atmosphere, and I thought it would be fitting if his ashes were part of the northern lights.  My eternal cosmic surfer—I would do that for him, and for me.

I had a vision of a clear day, where I would look out over the water toward the Arctic Circle and throw his dust skyward, but there were a lot of things that turned out not to be in keeping with my fantasy version of this moment.

Let’s start with the comical and then move to the sublime.  Nordkapp  was utterly socked in, visibility close to zero.  Not to be deterred, I went to the cliff edge  and started scattering his ashes anyway.  Well, if you remember a similar scene from The Great Lebowski, the updraft sent much of my first attempt back onto my jacket, my shoes and my face.  Not at all the way I pictured it! I figured out a better angle and threw the rest, which mostly plummeted down the cliff face in the heavy, still air.

Oh well! After wiping down as best I could, I went to the bar, which had a massive glass window designed to awe visitors with the spectacular view.  Nothing but a solid gray curtain of fog clung to the glass that day, Undaunted, I bought a glass of champagne and sat in the empty bar next to the window and said my son’s name out loud several times as a toast to hIs life and to my love for hIm. I cried. I cried a lot back then.

And I thought while i sat there that although I had pictured it differently, this  experience was a perfect representation  of where I was in my life. I knew the Arctic was out there. I knew the Aurora Borealis was out there. I  knew I had a future.  Another day, another time, I might see further and more clearly. I just couldn’t see anything right then beyond my own fog.

Memories of how things have come out differently than I envisioned  come to mind as I sit here in my condo in the fourth week of sheltering in place from Covid 19.  It’s a lot like sitting in that bar, knowing there is a reality out there, a future I am just not able to see.  But that’s okay.  I can be at peace with uncertainty and just let today be what it is.

On that day in Nordkapp, I committed the act of delinquency i am most pleased with in my life. I  finished the champagne and stole the glass to give to my son Ivan, along with the story that went with it.

All of life, I guess, is practice for what comes next, and memories  offer value in unexpected ways. And yes, I do believe that somehow my beautiful boy has found his way into the Aurora Borealis and that its light creates a path for him as I continue on earth to seek my own illumination.

 

I have had a complicated relationship with Should my whole life. It’s a story that, rather weirdly, involves punctuation  

When I was young, I rebelled against Should. I think doing so is healthy and necessary to become an adult with a strong individual identity. I’m talking about  Should with a question mark. “Should?” comes as we move from docile acceptance of authority when very young,  to wanting to overthrow everything, before coming back to something more resembling a balance. “Should?” challenges.  “Should?” shapes the adult we become.

As I matured I began to see Should differently. I began to understand what a privilege it is to have the life I have been granted. I have a base of security, comfort, and belonging, plus brains and abilities, that allow me to be effective in this world.  Should with an exclamation point  says that I don’t get to waste those gifts.  If I can write well, I have an obligation to do so. If I can lead, I need to lead. If I can contribute, I need to contribute. Much given, much asked in return.

“Should!” guided my career. I wanted to use my gifts to make as much of a difference as I possibly could to the cause of educational equity, the guiding passion of every teaching and administrative position I held. Because I turned out to be good at each job, “Should!” guided me to jobs of increasing importance, to the extent that is measurable by responsibilities and pay raises.

“Should!” played a big role in my career as an author as well.  I do love to write, and I don’t want this to sound as if I was dragged kicking and screaming into publishing five books in six years, but once it was clear that I could spin a good story that publishers wanted to buy and people wanted to read, “Should!” set in.  People told me they wanted me to write another book because they wanted to read it.  My agent wanted me to write another book because she wanted to sell it.  There were so many forgotten women whose stories were crying out to be told.

Most of my adult life I have been guided by “Should!”  I took on what was demanded of me, or that I demanded of myself, because I could. If I was good at something I felt obligated to do it, from career, to publishing, to volunteering, to running 10Ks or swimming laps.

“Should?” began poking its head back in my life more often as I moved into my sixties.  I became less interested in self-reinventions others thought I should make.  I didn’t want to learn how to do the latest, greatest thing, whether it was a new teaching strategy or learning how to work the bells and whistles on my phone.  I wanted to keep growing, but I wanted to choose how.  I guess you could say “Should!” was being countered more often  with “Do I really need to?” and the latter was proving more persuasive.

I chose to return to teaching rather than pursuing administrative advancement, then eventually I walked away from that into retirement.  I decided I didn’t owe anybody any more books. I didn’t owe unnamed  future students my knowledge.  I resigned from boards that weren’t providing me opportunities to feel I was growing in ways that mattered to me. I went into cruise lecturing with no sense of purpose other than to have fun sharing my knowledge and seeing the world.

Now in this age of Covid, I find myself in a new phase of my lifelong relationship  with Should.   In the past, when I was facing long stretches of unstructured time, I remained productive by establishing different categories of time and made myself spend at least an hour a day on each. It worked brilliantly as a self-imposed Should.

I blogged confidently about it here just a few weeks ago. In all honesty, it’s not working all that well now. I have my categories of time prominently displayed in my home, and I do use them as a reference point when I get antsy, but I just can’t make myself do anything I don’t feel like doing.

What’s so different?  I think it’s because until this point I was projecting into the future, seeing all those Shoulds (and the “Do I Really Need To’s”) as leading somewhere.  The goal might have been no more than a misty sense of well being in the future for having chosen a certain path, but that was enough.

Now I don’t know.  I don’t know how to believe in the future the way I used to. Certainly not with a fervor that will drive me today to do a little research on a potential writing project, or get down on the floor and do crunches. Should’s punctuation is now a trail of dots.

Good things might lie ahead, influenced by my efforts now, if I have the good luck to survive in good health.  That’s a big if.  What would I do today, if I were pretty sure I would survive this?   All I know  is that the answer is different than if I were pretty sure I wouldn’t.  The second, I  should confess, involves at the very least  far more ice cream and far fewer plank poses.

The background hum of Should is so different  now, precisely because I don’t know which of those questions will be the one I should have listened to. But don’t  get the idea I am despondent.  Actually I am pretty content these days. Maybe letting go of Shoulds is a natural part of the aging process, launched forward on steroids by this pandemic. What  seems clear now is that in this complicated, evolving new reality, when I can answer  “Yes!” to the question  “Do I Really Need To?” I can affirm life in this  moment in ways I might not ever find while listening too much  to Should.

Having lived through the cancer that took the life of my husband Jim eight years ago, I was thinking today about how similar some of my emotions are in this pandemic to those we faced  in the aftermath of his diagnosis.  Although then we knew how his story would eventually end, we had a lot of hope at the beginning that effective treatment could keep him around for a few more years.

The immediate period after his diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer was surprisingly unchanged, once we both got used to the small puncture in his back and the tube connecting to a urine collection bag that was always tucked under his clothes. Soon we were back to playing tennis, and going along in our lives more or less as usual.  We went a spur-of-the-moment trip to Hawaii over Thanksgiving rather than waiting for Spring Break, as we had planned. We laughed, we teased, we kept the bounce in our step.

The drone in the background was louder in my head than his. He was still denying the reality behind his PSA numbers. Treatment wasn’t working. He wouldn’t have the luxury many luckier prostate cancer patients have in their 70s, of being able to slow a 100% fatal cancer down so long they were liable to die of something else first.

He couldn’t go in the water in Hawaii because of his bag, so it wasn’t the same splashy-grinny trip we took the year before to Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, when we were blissfully unaware of the cancer already taking root. But we were there, together in Maui, and that was what mattered.  We went because of the unsaid message running through my head that made me insist on taking the trip then rather than waiting. I knew we were making our last memories. I knew this was about the quality of the rest of his life.  He died a few weeks before Spring Break.  We had made a wonderful memory while we still could. It made him smile for a few months  I am still smiling

It was always there, that drone in the background, brought forward occasionally by a jolt of awareness that something had changed.  We still played tennis but for a shorter periods, then less often.  Then we changed the rules so Jim didn’t have to run more than one step.  Then we stopped playing. Jim ate and drank with the same gusto, then, slowly, he didn’t.

And then he fell off a cliff. That is what dying of cancer is like. You are okay, all things considered, then suddenly you’re not. We played very abbreviated tennis up to six weeks before he died. He was still making his own lunch three weeks before he hit that cliff. Just as the doctor predicted, he stayed in bed more and more until he was there all day.

Jim went to hospice when the cancer, or the medication—I’m not sure which— affected his brain and he was behaving erratically in ways I was afraid I could not physically control.  He died three days later.

Why does this feel so similar?  It’s that drone in the background.  Maybe the virus is digging into my cells right now.  Maybe it’s already too late. Maybe this is it and I just don’t know the details. Maybe this is something I will survive and end up dying years down the road of something else.  Maybe this story is happening right now not to me, but to someone I love.

Life today is also similar because it is so disrupted. Our old lives aren’t on temporary hold.  In some respects they are already over. By the time Jim died, our beautiful condo had been ripped apart because I insisted that his two East Coast children not leave it to me to communicate with them after his death about what of his they wanted. We packed up and mailed things while they were here to say goodbye, despite how horrible we felt because he was sleeping in the back bedroom while we went through his things.

Life became a slow, incremental process of losing a little, then a little more. Then losing everything, except what can’t be lost, and that is the spirit in the living that enables us to go on, and the dead to transition whatever, if anything, might be beyond.

When you acknowledge the possibility of a fatal process already underway in your body, it changes your relationship to the material things in your life. I look around and wonder what it might be like for my son to confront what I leave behind.  This virus also makes us confront our non-material legacy— the story of what we have done with our lives.  To come bang-up against what it may be too late to do.

Maybe I have this malignancy  now, maybe I don’t. Maybe I will get it later, maybe not. But for now, I am going to navigate this changed world with the best, most hopeful spirit I can bring to it.  I am still planning my future. I am trying to learn all I can from this. The drone isn’t entirely bad. It alerts us to what is really important, and to the value of things— like love— that no disease can take away.