Love in the time of Covid

I took this photo April 7th - on the afternoon my brother passed away. I was on route to Vancouver Island to write for 10 days. I like to think of that teeny sailboat as him sailing off. He loved sailing as a boy and like many of the things that gave him joy, he didn’t take part in them enough through his life. A common story for us all. 

No, it wasn’t covid, though the pandemic certainly made the past year hellish for his brilliant and devoted wife Elane who was frequently prevented from being at his bedside. She knew better than anyone his myriad of needs and health issues that an overworked nursing staff could be expected to tend to. So her inability to advocate for him was a special kind torture for her. More overlooked covid collateral heartbreak. But eventually he was sent home with hospice care.

As is common among family members, we loved one another dearly and enjoyed our unique relationship due to a shared childhood, but were not as close as we could have been. And certainly weren’t geographically once he moved from Oregon a decade ago to Georgia, Florida and finally Indiana. But as fate would have it, technology provided me and other family members the ability to frequently keep him company over the past year of being either bound to hospital or home, probably affording us the most time together in all our adult years combined. 

Steve was a hunky tennis player and sailor in his youth, but once he hit his 50’s he put on an extra 20 - 50 lbs, depending on the year. I’m not even sure when he stopped being active, but it likely triggered the cavalcade of heart & kidney issues starting with the Big C, with some moderate dementia thrown in, which ironically may have mercifully diminished his distress. Despite Elane’s heroic above-and-beyond care of him at home in Indiana, his body finally gave up. And though it sounds so counter to what we consider “being at the bedside”, even being present virtually along with his daughter Dara and our sister Barbara was profoundly powerful. 

I know that’s where I should end this, but the full disclosure is, I regret more the life he didn’t live than the life he lost. Though he found his way to teaching - primarily creative writing - as his livelihood, he had an enduring love of theatre, journalism and nature. In the ‘90’s he was very involved in community theatre in Sandy Oregon which mounted a couple of his plays. In fact the American Actor’s Theatre in NYC chose one of his plays to mount. It was very exciting and I was going to surprise him for opening night, and my sister and her partner were attending as well. As we each prepared to head for the airport, he got a call from the director that the lead actor had neglected to learn his lines and had walked and the play was not going to open. Sometimes I wonder if that was the crushing disappointment from which he never fully recovered his belief that his creative path was worthy of pursuing. 

He was a fearful guy - his reticence to fly prevented him from visits with his daughter and granddaughters. He lost contact with nature. His passivity seemed to cast a thin veil over life preventing him from being truly present, engaged and fully conscious.  But god, I loved his laugh. I loved making him laugh. And he adored his wife and she him. His sisters, Elane, his cousins, his daughter, his granddaughters, his friends and his students will all miss him. He was a sweet soul.

Why am I telling you all this? Because damn, life is both too short and too long to wait! That’s my Covid lesson - the loss of my brother lesson. Sometimes I think we all need to relentlessly push to overcome our own innate inertia. It finally landed for me that we do have the power to shake off the shackles of old habits, tired old stories we’ve been telling ourselves, and most of all the fear that holds us back - keeping us weighed down, literally and figuratively. Though I’m aware this may be largely a voice of privilege, most of us do have the ability to flip the switch to empower ourselves to strive for the lives we want. Sometimes that means hard choices. And sometimes hearing the words and flipping the switch is the chasm of a lifetime. The last song I wrote is called “No Better Time”. :-)

Okay - forgive the preachy bits and the typos! 

Stay safe and sane and hug the ones you love (and are allowed to hug!)

Love, 
Shari