(How Are You?) Are You Okay?

[Hello from July 2, 2023. This one sat in my drafts for a long time and I just saw it tonight. I am eminently more “okay” today than I was when I wrote it. We aren’t post-pandemic but I just went to the crowded Market Basket today and while I was masked, I wasn’t anxious. I am living in between the world that has moved on and the world of awareness that there are many for whom “moving on” will never be an option. But personally, I am greatly healed from all of my losses and I can tell that I am by my dreams, by my ability to enter the day without feeling in a soul-fog, and by my sense of wholeness. I hope you are also doing well. I hope this post will encourage to share the story of how the pandemic is/was for you. I feel that I am in a process of integrating it all, and maybe you are too. – PB ]

This blog was locked up for awhile due to tech issues, and that’s not a bad thing. Writing is not something I can not do; it has always been my primary way of making sense of my life and feelings. Even if writing doesn’t explain or resolve anything, it always feels valuable to me to respect my life enough to record some of it. The same goes for our shared lives; I write my impressions and reactions to the times we’re living in as often as I record my own much smaller concerns.

And we sure as heck have been living through some times. We talk all the time now about trauma, which I appreciate for its clinical clarity: trauma is psychological and physiological. The more we know about it, the better we can address healing. It helps to know about the vagus nerve and brain chemistry and how our bodies manifest shock and loss. It is also important to address the soul in pain — how do we accompany the soul in is own underworld experience? I can’t answer that but I have a lot more experience in doing it now.

In November of 2019 I started a sabbatical. I traveled to England, France and Spain. While in London I attended three operas based on the Orpheus myth. I felt drawn to the Orpheus and Eurydice as related to my earlier passion for the Persephone myth. I wrote my master’s thesis at Harvard Divinity School on Persephone and Jesus as twin avatars of resurrection and the use of the Persephone story in pastoral care to women.  When I saw the Anais Mitchell’s genius work, “Hadestown” on Broadway in July of 2019 it re-activated a fascination with these mystery religions and the Queen of the Underworld. Get the Original Broadway Cast recording! It’s amazing!

After I tracked Orpheus across London and France and spent some time in Spain (Monserrat! Girona! Barcelona!) I spent Advent of 2019 at home in Massachusetts, worshiping with a monastic community and attending holiday concerts and outings; a real treat for a parish minister who is usually too busy that time of year to attend services.  A dear friend stayed with me and my beloved beagle Max for a month. Early into the new year of 2020, I flew to Arizona to attend an intensive training to become a certified spiritual director. While out West I road-tripped out to California to see the opera “Eurydice” and then came back to Phoenix after a brief stop at the Grand Canyon.

I flew home on February 20 or so, went to visit my sister in Connecticut, and then life went kaflooey. My mom had had a health crisis but she was stable, so we thought, and I was planning on going down to visit. But you remember what happened. The weird cancellations and closures. I followed the news and announcements from our governor and thought, “Wow, I can’t fly to North Carolina? I mean, I guess I can drive!” But no. Then it was no driving. You might touch the gas pump and die coughing the next day. The next day it was don’t leave the house. It was don’t touch anything.

On March 25, my mom died. I almost want to say she “up and died,” because that was what it felt like.  My siblings and I had a group conversation with her on the phone from the hospital. We sang “Bushel And A Peck” (a song she had always sung to us).  On a private call a few hours later I told her I loved her and her last words to me were “I don’t trust you.” She was lucid, believe me. It was a very intentional dig, consistent with her treatment of me for years.  What can you say to a dying woman? Certainly not, “Mom, you don’t trust ME because you’re chronically dishonest yourself. It’s called projection.”  Did I mention that we had been estranged? 

I told her to be at peace, I would always hold her love with me and hoped she would know she went with mine. You know why I did that? Because my mama raised me to be gracious, to understand that people’s nastiness is their problem, not mine. Oh, the irony.

During my mom’s last days, I saw a Tshirt that said, “It ran in the family until it ran into you.”  It has become a motto. I broke many generational patterns of abuse, but even as that was hard and painful, I was able to do so largely because of the loving mothering Shirley was able to give me during the years she was emotionally healthy, committed to recovery and sobriety. And my childhood, during which she suffered with substance abuse disorder, depression, eating disorders and a terrible marriage, she also made a valiant effort to be a good and loving mom. She was sad and scary but also magical and wonderful and gave us some really good stuff for our life backpacks.

Shirley had a hard time aging. A really hard time.  Not my story to tell, but it was hard to watch. It is hard to watch someone who has worked so hard to heal their wounds and to befriend their demons slide into bitterness and dishonesty. I am glad that she did not have to endure a drawn-out decline; she wanted more than anything to avoid that, and perhaps that is why she did not share medical information with us. Children are wont to push parents to do everything possible to ensure maximum longevity, but that was not my mother’s goal. I respect that. Here’s my girl. We were in NYC. I took her to see three Broadway shows. We had a blast. Here she is at a bistro in Union Square showing me her lipstick.

Shirley Lesko Weinstein Mole, 1939-2021

Almost simultaneously with mom dying, I returned six weeks early from my sabbatical to help my congregation cope with the shut-down. A time of utter madness for all industries and when we wanted to complain, we just thought of the essential workers and health care sector and the educators and zipped our lips.

 I hope I will never forget the wild experience of bringing a church program online. Only my music director will ever know the true chaos we managed on multiple devices while producing a beautiful worship service over Zoom. We were up until 3AM learning new technology, editing videos, scrambling along with the rest of the world to try to figure out how to function under bizarre and unprecedented circumstances. 

Two people I will always remember who cared for me in those first weeks of fear and loss: my dear friend Michael who drove up to Lynn from the South Shore just to hug me. We put a big fleece blanket over him and one over me to protect ourselves. It was so scary but he knew that my heart was broken and I needed human contact.

And Jim, my gum-chewing neighbor who has lived in the triple-decker next to me for thirty years or so, texted me a day or two after mom died. This is what he wrote, “Hi Victoria, I will be getting your groceries so get a list to me by Thursday. I will be going to Market Basket, Stop & Shop and Whole Foods, so feel free to let me know what brands of items you prefer.” 

“I WILL BE GETTING YOUR GROCERIES.” He was informing me, not asking me.  Listen, I was in such a daze of sorrow and discombobulation, I went with it! This was a genius tactic, because if he had said the usual, “Do you need anything,” I would have responded with the usual, “Oh no, I’m just fine, thank you.” I wasn’t fine at all, and Jim got my groceries for weeks. When I went to square up with him financially, he waved me off, chewing gum. “Naw, we’re good.”  He didn’t give me a choice! So he gets muffins (I’m a bad baker but I really make an effort for him) and my eternal thanks.

I should also mention that I have an amazing neighborhood and that we did, and still do, a brisk front porch Tupperware trade. Soups, casseroles, bottles of wine, bags of bagels, borscht (me), and yes, the traditional cup of sugar when requested. 

When warm weather came in 2020, I was able to sit outdoors with friends (remember that?). I finally got to see my sister in CT, but not to hug her. Boxes of mom’s belongings had been transported up from South Carolina (via a friend I made on Twitter!), and Karen and I went through them, masked and distanced, but at last together.

I recorded sermons in my back yard. Again, my good neighbors were supportive and told me to text them so they could avoid mowing their lawns or blasting music at those times. 

The fall came again and the congregation became a bit more adept at being “together in spirit,” as we said at the start of all our online worship services.

We carried on. I soldiered on. But the social isolation of the shutdown was more damaging than I knew at the time. I have never been a lonely person, but I became painfully lonesome. When I thought I would crack, I talked to friends who were also on the verge of cracking because of the enforced togetherness with spouses and kids. I would crank up The Cure and dance in the kitchen and try to feel the presence of people I loved through memory and longing. One of my important practices was to clean my kitchen and tidy the living room every night so that when I woke up the next day, it would look as though someone who cared about me had been in my space.  I also started preparing overnight oats for the same reason: to wake up and feel that someone who cared about me had prepped a nourishing breakfast for me. 

In late November of 2020, my sole companion, my beagle Max, was diagnosed with a malignant tumor of the spleen. It is hard to express how hard this news fell upon me.  I was in no condition to take it well or with any level of equanimity. I ask this a lot of people now, because I think it is so important to keep processing our pandemic experiences — “What did you feel was a breaking point? Did you have one?” 

Mine was losing my sweet beagle. I nursed him and savored every moment with his warm hamock self, marveling at his irrepressibly cheerful nature even while suffering the indignities of a failing digestive system. Friends came by and said goodbye to him in the backyard, bundled up against the cold, speaking gently to him and dropping tears on his neck. His thumped his tail and snuffled them.

What a good boy he was. We went to the beach just days before he died. 

Max died the morning of my birthday, January 14, 2021. I had stockpiled painkillers and sedatives in preparation, so when he collapsed in the yard, I was ready. I dosed him up and got him bundled into the car with his dear dog walker, Jeannine, who just happened to be texting me that morning. She rushed over and helped me get him to the hospital, where he was gently transferred to a blanket-covered gurney and rolled into a family visiting room. I am so very grateful that we were able to come inside with him, and he had a peaceful passing. 

I stumbled through the subsequent weeks. I don’t think I have ever been so undone. Max’s presence in the house was the one relationship I had relied on. I cried more than I have ever cried in my life. So much grief upon grief.  The love we have with our animal companions is so pure! There was none of the emotional complexity I had experienced with my mom’s death. I just missed my best buddy so much.

At the lowest times of my life I have always found great comfort, meaning and focus in work, and I am very grateful I had meaningful work to do. Pastoring was an enormous help in maintaining perspective: we were all suffering. We were all trying to get each other through this.

Then I met a cute guy on Valentine’s Day, exactly a month after Max’s death. This guy and I had a Zoom date and although he was shy and basically just walked by the camera without making eye contact with me, I was immediately smitten. I went and picked him up from the Cape Ann Animal Aid a few days later and brought him home in a carrier box.

He was a polydactal and I named him Edgar Allen Toe.

Edgar was a total joy, a lover of a tabby with those big mitties and a little fur mohawk on his big square head. He had been found as a stray and was incredibly happy to play fetch with fake mice for as long as he could engage me as his pitcher.  He always looked quite serious but he was a happy and playful boy. 

But five months after bringing him home, this little rock star collapsed in my basement and I rushed him to the Vet ER. A vet tech took him in for an examination and eventually the vet herself came out to tell me, “This is very sad.” Edgar had thrown a saddle thrombus and there was nothing to be done. To try to attempt surgery would almost certainly be futile and he would be in physical agony.  He was brave and gracious and trusting to the last.  I came home with his collar and cried and cried.

My friends were starting to really worry about me. It was all too much. Thank God that by that point I had been vaccinated and could get out of the house and risk some hugs and outings. Grief needs companionship. Grief needs quiet solidarity and presence. Grief needs hanging out and hearing how and what other people are doing who aren’t you. Grief needs fresh air and lots of time in the pool on a noodle. Grief needs sitting around listening to birds and passing the pitcher of sangria and chatting about nothing in particular.

We ask each other, “How are you?” I don’t remember who originally said this — it isn’t my idea but it’s a good one: perhaps it is better to ask each other, “are you okay?” 

[This is where this entry ended. So let me finish with an Epilogue:

Life feels normal, or normal-ish now. I don’t think America or the world has done even remotely enough to acknowledge the losses of the pandemic; perhaps we can’t, perhaps that’s not what civilizations do after plagues. I do not know. 

I have changed. Not just because of the pandemic, but because of the increased violence and politically-enforced hatred in our country; a backlash against progress. I am more focused, and I am clearer than ever that spiritual care and collective support for healing and peace-making is urgently needed. We cannot function and thrive and resist if we have unaddressed trauma. I am really grateful that there is so much more attention to his reality today.

I went back to Broadway in 2021 and saw “Hadestown” again. The audience and the (still original) cast shared a profound sense of communion. The gasp at the very end of the show when Orpheus turns around to look at Eurydice, she descends into the Underworld forever, and Hermes (the great Andre DeShields) comes back on stage to say, “It’s a sad song” was almost a wail. We walked out scalded and reborn, because that’s what art does.

Oh, and this is Bendigo. He was rescued by Paws4Survival from the streets of Puerto Rico. I knew he was family the moment my dear friend Erin sent me his photo in October of 2021. I had said “no more animals, my heart can’t take it” but she wisely refused to believe me.  My heart can take it. 

And this here is Dibley, or Dibs. He was found as a stray from the streets of Newark, New Jersey and rescued by (you guessed it!) Paws 4 Survival! He joined the family on May 30, 2022.

They are brothers from another mother.

And so it goes. I’ll close with a poem that I used in a church service at some point during the worst of it all, and I hope it speaks to you, too.