Loved ones are hanging on for life and hospitals are full of CoVid. Does bone marrow expire? My Uncle needs that transplant.
We have several first responders and medical practitioners in the extended family and I don’t think it’s just them with empathy fatigue. I think most of us are exhausted. It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we can’t care. We’re too tired, too depressed, too angry.
Friends keep their texts short with me or don’t reply at all. Once in a while they can muster a visit. I’m the same. I want to say, “Don’t worry, I won’t talk about cancer, just please come over for a walk.” But then five minutes later I’m too crushed to be public. I send other texts to other friends who I know can struggle to live. Short love notes. Feels like morse code in war time.
Generally, best to curl up in the yellow chair with the blue blanket and fantasize about Puglia and trullos, Adriatic air, red wine and the sound of church bells.
Then back to cleaning, cooking, dog walking, planning, working, pulling up the garden, paying off the bills, reading up on the election, viewing the latest CoVid numbers.
When will this be over?
It feels necessary to purchase this for at least a hundred of my favourite people.
I just saw a heartfelt play called So Damn Proud, about siblings wresting with their history, identity and Indigeneity. It stars Michelle Bardach so what’s not to love? (only on until Sept 24) The dance in that piece and Russell Wallace’s music in particular, was so generous. It rejuvenated us. Hearing Aaron M Wells speak Squamish, a gift.
Art. Art can be empathetic when the rest of us are just so done. So can Prayer, so can Nature. Yeah. I can’t fall apart. Too many people need me and for heaven’s sake, I’m in my fifties. I know by now how to do sustained grief. Art. Prayer. Nature. Because hu
mans, ah, my dear humans, can only take so much.
