I always thought I knew a lot about danger. Like what part of New York to avoid at night after the Theatre Production ended. How to be wise when traveling in a foreign country like Britain or France or Spain with a Canadian Flag on my back pack. How to recognize scam phone calls: especially the ones that begin “Don’t hang-up”.
I also believed I had experienced just about everything there was to experience; marriage and divorce times 2, childbirth times 2, and cancer (only once thank goodness). I had started over many times, moved into and out of a myriad of homes and apartments and always made the transition eventually. So just what made these last 12 weeks so damned hard?
I COULDN’T WRITE!
I managed to eat regularly despite the fact that I couldn’t have my twice-a-week dinners out with friends. I learned how to use Zoom.us, initially thrilled with it, now hating it as I can’t stand looking at myself while trying to focus all my attention on the person with whom I am talking. I tried working out on my own only to realize that if I was able to do that I wouldn’t need a personal trainer and a kick boxing coach to keep me on the straight and narrow.
The weather was awful much of the time and lethargy followed by mild depression set in. I couldn’t make simple decisions, I became quick to anger and felt like crying much of the time. Initially I worried about money, my mortgage and other debts. Being a “news junkie” didn’t help either. The more I read the more hopeless I became. I started feeling very, very, sorry for myself. Just when I thought I couldn’t handle any more bad news, my estranged brothers (for the past 16 years) contacted me.
Their news was ominous, one of them had just been given 4 to 6 weeks to live: untreatable cancer. And I rose to the occasion. I realized that while I had credited myself with gaining wisdom over the lost years it had never occurred to me that they might have done so as well. They did and we have reconciled. Sandy passed away 4 weeks after the three of us reconnected. My brother Bob and I are in touch every two or three days now.
I discovered through all of this that Covid 19, the loss of our external supports, the fear that our lives will never be the same, and the deaths of so many people are really the stuff of life itself. It’s the stuff that we write about whether it’s fiction, memoire, letters to the editor, poetry or songs.
The truth is writers eventually write again, NO MATTER WHAT! Our words matter to us and to the people who read them. It is us who record history as we see it and live it. This is what feeds our fantasies, our dreams, our truth. And don’t forget the following when all else fails:
“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” (Mary Heaton Vorse an American journalist, labour activist, social critic & novelist, 1874-1966)
