The Art of Losing

In the last year, we have all practiced the art of losing: we have lost being with family and friends, lost a bit of our independence, lost time.  We’ve become pretty good at it, actually. I’ve been reflecting a lot on the last year as I recently celebrated my second Pandemic Birthday. Soon, my wife and I will celebrate our second Pandemic Anniversary.

April is National Poetry Month, so I’ve been revisiting a lot of poetry – Elizabeth Bishop is a favorite, and I’ve always loved “One Art.” From the relative safety of our homes, it’s been hard to watch so much disaster all around us while we lived happily during the pandemic – I’m borrowing from Ilya Kaminsky here and his poem “We Lived Happily During the War.” (By the way, Ilya Kaminsky will be our featured poet at the 13^th annual Blackbird Poetry Festival later this month.) It is true though – my wife and I have been more or less content during the pandemic. We have each other, and work keeps us busy; I’ve practiced guitar a lot. We’ve read and re-read books. Netflix has kept us pretty entertained – we resisted Tiger King but watched every bit of Bridgerton, rewatched all of The Office. Our dogs love having us constantly with them, especially our senior chihuahua who takes up his perch every day on the couch in my wife’s office while she teleworks, unwitting guest star of all her virtual meetings. We miss our friends, but we have done Zoom happy hours (which got old fast), we’ve missed our families, we’ve missed baseball games and theater and going out to a nice dinner inside a restaurant. But none of this has been a disaster; I think that is because we knew that staying home, practicing social distancing (avoiding the politics of it all and following the science), and waiting for and then taking the vaccine as soon as it was ready was the only way to get back to normal again. And normal is worth waiting for.

I’ve also reflected a lot on what I cannot bear to lose and who cannot bear to lose me. I cannot bear to lose my wife, so it was kind of an emotional thing to get our vaccines together and know that we’ve done what we can do. I cannot bear to lose my family, so I pray every day for their safety. Same with my friends – I rejoice every time I see those updates that another one has gotten the vaccine – I high-five the air. I miss my students and my campus and can’t wait to walk across the quad again, write on a whiteboard, see a student in office hours. I feel hope’s feathers growing inside me a bit more every day.

There is another side of this too. I have no intent to be lost; I have a responsibility not to be lost. I know that my wife cannot bear to lose me – having lost her parents already, I cannot leave her alone in this life, so there was no question at all that I would get the vaccine immediately. No question that until it was available I would do anything and everything I could to make her feel safe. I don’t think my mom could bear to lose me either – having lost one child already, this would be a disaster. There isn’t much – there isn’t anything – that isn’t worth delaying to keep them from feeling that loss.

A year ago, I wrote a blog post on my birthday, and 1001 American lives had been lost to COVID on that day. Just over a year later, that number is an astonishing 553,000 and counting. That really is unbelievable except that we’ve been watching it unfold day by day. It’s hard to emotionally, mentally fight against all of this loss – but we have to. We all have people who can’t bear to lose us. Spring feels so much different this year than last. Renewal seems possible, but only if we act on our intent not to be lost. I can’t wait to see you all again someday soon.