Postmortem 1

Now that I'm out of quarantine, I am hoping that I can make further sense of what's happened to me over the last two months.  Yesterday would have been my scheduled return from Costa Rica.  I had to leave two weeks earlier because of the pandemic.  Of course I resented this.  Why leave a zone where there are zero cases of the coronavirus, only to return to the festering welter of sickness that is plaguing my own city (pardon the pun)?  And just because the prime minister said that I have to?  Of course I underestimated the seriousness of the situation. I still judiciously will not use the words gravity or grave.  AIDS was grave.  The mortality rate was one hundred percent.  Covid 19 is serious, 1.5 percent mortality, highly contagious and a huge threat to respiratory health, and the possibility of our health care system collapsing under the weight of this crisis is ever present.   This is serious.  It is not grave, but it does not pose an existential threat to our humanity.  Most people will recover.  But it is serious and people are rightfully scared.   I get it.

Just half an hour ago I had to scold two tenants on my floor who were visiting inside her apartment.  The door was open, and I let them have it, telling them that they were putting themselves at risk, and then I emailed a report to our building manager.  Yes, I am  snitch.  We are in the middle of a global pandemic and everyone has to cooperate. 

I understand the importance of staying home as much as possible.  I still try to get out for a couple of hours of walking and fresh air, taking care to avoid people.  It also gives me a break from having to hear the marauding elephant on my ceiling. 

Am I afraid?  Not especially.  I am confident that we will get through this.  I also feel fairly safe from the virus, though one never knows, so I am still preparing for the worst. 

Today, as always, I m going out.  I will avoid people and practice safe distancing, but I have to buy food.    It is, of course, very strange coming home to this surreal, near apocalyptic landscape after five weeks spent in Colombia and Costa Rica, close to people and to nature.  And now everyone is afraid, of the virus and of each other, and understandably so. 

What I do fear is losing what God gave me while I was away in those countries, because what I was given was a sense of connectedness to others that this socially sanctioned fear and neurosis thanks to this pandemic could very easily defraud me of.  And I am not going to let that happen.