Four pandemic postcards

I.

Dear Helen,

I learned, as your daughter, that the sorrow that shadowed your beauty and light came in part from being born three months after your father, Antoni, died at age 40 of the Spanish flu, official cause of death pneumonia, in February 1920, at the tail end of the pandemic. It was said that Antoni may have built his own coffin; he was employed at a casket factory. At the time of your birth, your newly widowed mother, Josephine, had two other daughters under three, spoke no English, worked as a maid.

The four of you moved into a room in someone’s house. You used to say you never got over being poor, even when adult life became more comfortable.

You were nearly 40 when I was born. I was nearly 40 when you died, suddenly, of cardiac arrest. It was July, and I was about to complete my master’s degree and be born, so to speak, into a new career as a teacher. I almost didn’t start my new job that fall. In my grief and shock it felt impossible. But I pushed myself, as I am pushing myself now to stay safe and whole in this impossible time.

You were a worrier; I feel you worrying about me. Your father, my grandfather, died in the Spanish flu pandemic. If I can help it, I am not getting or spreading COVID.

II.

Dear Chester,

You would have been 99 this year. When your health was beginning to fail, in a rare moment of vulnerability, you spoke to me of your anxiety about the afterlife. I replied, from a deep and connected part of myself, that you had nothing to fear. I could tell that my words reassured you.

Your passing, a few days later, from congestive heart failure, was peaceful. Unable to speak, you were pointing ahead, and then at yourself, as though you were communicating with someone who had come for you. Being with you at the moment of your death remains one of the most profound experiences of my life.

I want to reassure you that I am taking good care of myself in this crazy time. As my father, you would not like it that I am putting myself at risk at work, but what can I do? I am old, but not old enough to retire. Some days I get to work from home, and that helps.

You would be happy to know that a vaccine is already being given. I know health care workers, including your former neighbors, who have received their doses. I will get mine as soon as I can.

I miss you every day, but I am glad you are not here for this.

III.

Dear G.,

Your sudden death from a brain aneurysm at 36 set me on a path of redefinition after the shock and depression passed. Forever young, your memory bolsters my anchoring belief that we are every age we have ever been. That anchor plays a key role in my creative process, my optimism, and my empathy.

When we were 25 we toured the national parks of the west, putting thousands of miles on a rented Dodge Daytona, stopping everywhere so you could take photos of what you called “life forms” – animals, plants, insects, scenery. I went out walking in the benign indifference of nature nearly every day during the 2020 shutdown. I took many photos I would be proud to show you.

You were a scientist, a photographer, and a journalist, and had you lived, you might be writing about this COVID hell right now, helping us understand it better. Almost daily, I have found myself trying to see it through your eyes.

IV.

Dear B.,

Our last therapy session was in 2014. We had worked together for years. Following the rules, I can’t reach out to you now. It’s hard not to. You were a light in my life. It’s as though you’re dead, though I know you’re not. I channel your insight often; your voice is inside me.

I must tell you my COVID dream, in this postcard I will never send. I’m young, living with one of my college friends in a room that looks like my parents’ bedroom in our first house. A boy I knew in childhood has suddenly shown up there, sprawled out on the bed with books and papers, doing homework. I am fearful because he is not in our pod, we are not distancing, he is not wearing a mask.

A COVID anxiety dream, right? But listen - the roommate in the dream died more than twenty years ago. She had developed a progressively severe degenerative disease during our college years. The boy who appears in the dream experienced traumatic abuse in childhood, I later learned. His untimely death a few years ago shocked and saddened me.

Am I hearing you say that these tragically deceased friends of mine represent aspects of myself?

I’m not done figuring out this death-haunted dream. I am convinced there are better days ahead. I want us all to be here for them.