I love to watch the tide come in.
As the ocean water flows in at the behest of the moon, it fills every nook and cranny across the sand in its way. The salty river fills holes blown by a vast invisible network of clams and transforms formerly stranded rocks into connected underwater cities frequented by a myriad of marine life. When the tide reaches high, it is hard to believe that the vast, tranquil sandy beach that existed only hours before will ever return again.
This is also the nature of a certain type of sadness. The very sadness that I feel today. And yesterday. And tomorrow. The sadness that I breathe, walk, and live in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like water, it flows everywhere across my emotional and mental landscape. While it has not yet consumed me, it is everywhere, breaking in waves of grief over the collective pain that humanity is now bearing. It is not the flu... which annually stutters across the landscape of a partially vaccinated population, unable to gain a strong or persistent foothold amongst a people who are wise to its ways.
Instead, it is a vicious predator among a naive population... able to infect anyone, but particularly interested in robbing life from those who are already weak, whether from age or underlying disease. It is the epitome of sociopathic, bearing no responsibility or concern for those that it attacks, interested only in endlessly multiplying, hoping to win the inevitable battle it will encounter with the soldiers of the immune system. Either way, whether the immune system wins or the virus wins, the virus will ultimately die. To the virus, the battle is pointless. But to the person whom it infects, the battle is critical.
So, in my isolation -- sheltered in a place formerly known as my home -- I watch the upticks on the news. I try to pass the time doing more productive things. I try to love my neighbors from six feet away. I try to be uplifting to those who are thousands of miles away. I try to pretend to others in my household, two and four pawed alike, that everything is normal (they are not fooled).
Most of all, I try not to think about how long the pandemic will rage on. I try not to think about the death, the loneliness, the pain, the suffering, the confusion, the agonizing choices, the overburdened healthcare system, the insanity of it all. But, as I feel the tide rolling in, having not yet reached the high water mark, the sadness flows on, filling every nook and cranny of my former life.
When it rolls back out again, the landscape will be entirely different. Life will be profoundly altered.
