Day 100

I’m back in New Jersey. I’m sitting in the same place I sat when I started this blog. Mom and Dad were on their way home, I was getting reading to hunker down for long spell of distance learning, no taekwondo, no writing group. Simple isolation in Long Island with the people who meant the most to me. I sat down that day at my desk because I thought in twenty years it might be interesting to look back and see the contrast between my perspective of the pandemic and my son’s perspective. I hoped it would make us laugh in retrospect. That lasted a week. On day 8 Dad got sick and in the days that followed I cried more on this keyboard than I ever had before. My blog will still serve as a historical record of the pandemic, but not quite in the way I had imagined. In twenty years, if my son or I revisited these pages, it will be with tears not laughter.

The pandemic is far from over. The virus is still spreading, people are still dying. But in New York and New Jersey there are less cases, less fear. Tomorrow, I will have my first live taekwondo class in more than three months. Yes, it will be outside, and we will have to keep our distance from each other and wear masks, but I will see my instructor face to face instead of on a screen. This morning my spouse went in for cataract surgery, a surgery that had been postponed for three months when there was a hold on elective and non-life threatening surgeries. The library is open for curbside pick-up — and I finally returned all the books I checked out back in March. The world is opening. We are still mourning.

I spent a good part of this afternoon doing some research for a possible summer vacation to Michigan. My son has lost the beach with his grandfather, Disney, Universal, and Cub Scout camp this summer. We are going to do what we can to try and salvage some fun. We will go camping for a few days next week. My brother will let us stay at his condo in Cape Cod for a week. We’ll go back to Mattituck with Mom. And then, hopefully, we’ll be able to do at least part of the road trip we intended. Obviously, Canada is out since the border is closed to casual tourists. Niagara Falls will have to wait for another time. But the cases of Covid in Michigan seem to be decreasing and so if hotels are open, we will go see the Great Lakes and National Parks. Of course, I’m worried about money, since it doesn’t seem like I’ll have any work in the fall. When I mentioned my concerns to my spouse, she said, “We have to go. It’s the best way I can think of to honor your father. He always considered these summer experiences important for our son. He’d want us to go.” And she’s right. He’d want us to go and have the best time possible, to form as many fun memories as we can, and show our son a little more of the world.

This is my 100th day of writing. One hundred so often represents a time to celebrate: a baby’s first hundred days, the first hundred days of school. But for me, there is nothing to celebrate here. At the end of these hundred days, there is an emptiness that I will carry with me for the rest of my life

Daddy died 10 weeks ago. Yet, there are times it still feels like yesterday. I have cried every day since he died, every day since I brought him to the hospital. I’m sure there will come a day when I can make it from sun up to sun down without tears, but I suspect it’s still quite a ways in the future.

More than 122,000 Americans have been killed (by the virus, but a strong, honest, and compassionate President would have saved many of them.) But we live in society that values money over life and that’s not going to change, even if we elect someone new in November. 

I’ve written 130,000 words. It’s longer than any novel or memoir or collection of essays I’ve written previously. But it’s not just words, it’s my deepest pain woven into sentences. 

I will forever miss my father. My son will forever miss his grandfather. We miss his voice, his hugs, his laugh, his love. The world is a colder and sadder place without him in it.

Today, I end my daily posts. However, if something striking or exciting happens you’ll hear from me. I’m a writer after all, writing is what I do.