Soapbox

I stopped by my elderly neighbor’s house today to water the plants and bring in the front porch flyers. She is in a bed 50 miles away, failing in both body and mind.

I run a quick cloth over the tables and the TV screen, removing dust she no longer cares about, because it feels wrong to let it build up. Then, slowly, for the first time in all the years I have known her, I sit down in her chair.
Children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren smile at me from the shelves. I look across the street to my own front door, remembering the days and weeks and months and years that she sat here, watching and waving to me as I walked the dog and went to work.
And it really hits me how alone she was.

“Call me if you need anything” I would say when I phoned to ask if she wanted anything from the grocery store. And she would always say she was fine, when what she really needed but would never ask for was for me to put down the rake or the dog leash or car keys and just walk across the street and knock, say “Hey, got a few minutes to chat?”
And I did that…. sometimes. But not often enough.
Still, she called me a good friend.

I didn’t really notice when she gradually became unable to get out on her own to see friends at church or go out to eat. Her daughter drove to town once a week to get her groceries and stay overnight. I would look for the car so I knew she had someone with her for that little while. I always paused and waved when I walked by with the dog, whether I saw her in her chair or not. On her birthday early in the Covid lockdown I got several neighbors together and we stood in her front yard and waved and sang “Happy Birthday”.
And I had stuff of my own I was doing, and I guess I told myself that it was enough.
But sitting there in her chair, listening to the incredible stillness of a house too-long empty, I know it was not enough.

Shortly before she went to the hospital we had a power outage. I stopped over twice to see how she was doing, offered to bring her some ice, and the second time she asked me to come in, and then asked if I wanted to play Scrabble.
Really? I thought about the preparations I was making for a hot night without power, and dusk was approaching… and then I thought about her. No TV, no radio, no one to talk to. Just the window, looking out on the rest of the world.
And I said “Sure” and we pulled the board over to the window to get the waning light and she beat me HARD because she is a good scrabble player, which I hadn’t known about her.
I called her daughter for her because her phone had no power, “Hey this is Tracy, you never told me that your mom is a Scrabble hustler, good thing I didn’t bet anything!” and gave her my phone so they could talk for a little while.
“I’m fine” she said. “I have the best neighbors!”
We talked about this and that as I got my hat handed to me until it grew too dark, and she turned on her flashlight and said she’d go to bed. I went upstairs and got sheets and pillows so she could sleep on the sofa by the screen door to catch the breeze and avoid that long flight of stairs in the dark.

And then she had a sudden back problem and her daughter came and took her to the hospital, and they wanted her to go to a rehab center instead of home. I was in my yard when they stopped by to get her some clothes and other belongings to take with her “for a short stay” “Maybe 30 days”. I helped with the bags and leaned in the car to hug her and say goodbye.
“Oh, I have such a good neighbor, such a good friend” she said.
But I really only was sometimes. When I thought of her instead of me. Which wasn’t often enough.

She never came back, and it’s clear that she never will.
I look back into the dining room and see the Scrabble box still sitting on the table, and am grateful that I stayed that evening, listened to her tell me those same stories of her childhood that she always tells. At least I did that.

I rock a bit in her chair. The house is SO quiet, they way they are while waiting on an ending, and a new beginning. The only sound is the relentless ticking of the old wall clock, counting down the days until someone reaches in and gently stops the hands.

It’s the word we allknow and hate:
Covid 19.
The pandemic virus.
(or the government hoax to take away our freedoms,depending on how fucking stupid you are.)

It’s why we have a whole box of test kits in the closet. And Sunday morning, this happened.

It didn’t just read positive- it almost yelled it. You’re supposed to wait 15 minutes after you insert that swab to read it but within 15 seconds that was saying “Oh HELL yes”.
And the world got a lot more complicated.

I got sick overnight on Thursday so first thing Friday I tested, and it was negative.
Whew
So I had a fever and coughing and head congestion and felt crappy- but it wasn’t covid. So it’s all ok.
Called in to take some time off work, assembled the usual equipment: tissue box, tylenol, ice water. I went through the McDonalds drive through (I don’t have covid, remember?) and got some french fries, because I thought the hot saltiness would taste good. It usually does when I have a cold.

It didn’t.
My fever spiked so I hit it with round-the-clock tylenol and woke at dawn drenched in sweat. Good! Getting better!
Nope.

Saturday was miserable. Ted was out of town. Steve was out of town. (Turned out to be a good thing but I had no one to take care of me). Katie dropped by (I stayed away from her) with some emergency supplies: Coke, popsicles, Lipton noodle soup and a bag of M&M’s. Perfect! Thanks!

And then I couldn’t eat them.
I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, and when I stood up and walked around I got vaguely nauseous. My fever was trying to go up so I needed to take tylenol, but didn’t want to put it alone in a stomach that unhappy. At 10 AM I nibbled one cracker and took tylenol, then lay back in frontof the TV in a miserable haze. At 2 it was time for more, so I had part of a raspberry popsicle and tylenol.

By 4 PM I was feverish and lying on the boathroom floor (because for some reason that eased my gastric discomfort a lot) with a cup of ice chips in front of me. Poor Tucker really wanted to go for a walk but I knew I couldn’t even manage one of his geriatric dog walks. It was a nice day so I put him outside and went back to my floor, where I dozed for an hour.

It was a miserable night. I found a position that was reasonably comfortable for my stomach and fell asleep, only to wake because it was not comfortable for my hip or back. I gave up on tylenol and let my fever do its thing because ice chips was all I could take.

Sunday morning I figured I should re-test, because this thing was a bear, whatever it was.
And then things got more complicated.

I texted Katie, because Ted and I had dinner with her and Amber on Wednesday. I texted Ted and Steve.

I called my mom, who had to go to the front desk and tell them she may have been exposed when I took her to the chiropractor on Wednesday. They gave her a test and an N-95 mask and told her she’s got to stay in her apartment for 10 days.
“Can you take another test?” she begged me. “Maybe that result was wrong. I’m gonna go crazy stuck in my apartment for 10 days!”

“False negatives are a lot more common than false positives” I told her. “And anyway, it’s 10 days from exposure, and you’re already 4 days in. Just 6 more days.”
Then I contacted siblings and asked them to please call mom frequently over the next 6 days to relieve her boredom.
I called work and told them not to expect me soon and said “Aren’t you glad I still wear a mask at work?” I couldn’t resist.

By Sunday my respiratory symptoms were getting a little better. I could tell I was a little feverish but it wasn’t the 102+ I had been fighting before. Much less coughing, more drippy nose. But my stomach was still upset. After my phone calls I set to work: stripped the linens off the bed and blankets off the futon in the front room, collected any towels I had used and put them all in the laundry. Wearing a mask and gloves I set about sanitizing every door knob, faucet and handle. I sprayed soft surfaces like the futon couch and throw pillow with a long shot of lysol.

All along nausea had been lurking in the background. I felt that if I was up and moving around too much I might throw up. After about 15 minutes of work I was proved right- though I had injested so little in the previous 8 hours that at least there wasn’t much to throw up.

Long before Ted got home I was ensconced in the basement family room with a box of tissues and a glass of ice chips. He and went to the store and got me some Kevita, which is a brand of kombucha which I thought it might settle things down. He also got cherry jello.

The Kevita really did the trick. I took one tiny sip… then another. Soon I had half the bottle down. It was amazing what just getting rid of that stomach ache did. I mean I was still sick: low-grade fever, nose dripping like a faucet and sneezing up a storm. But I had some jello before I turned out the light and it tasted and felt good going down.
Progress!

So now it’s Monday morning. I would go to the doctor today to see about getting some antivirals– but. It’s Memorial Day. The timing is just not working out.

On Friday and Saturday, when I felt like death warmed over, I thought I was covid negative. No use in the drugs. Sunday, when I found out I was positive, everyone was out of town and I was too exhausted and sick to call around myself and look into where and how to get it.
So I have to either wait til Tuesday (and you’re supposed to start them within 5 days of onset of symptoms) or go to the ER. Which will be filled with other people who would go to their doctor, but it’s Memorial Day and their doctor is playing golf. No thinks: not unless it’s an actual emergency.

I feel… better. Still sick. I went upstairs to let the dog out at 5 AM and got light-headed at the top of the stairs. I had a cup of tea and a piece of jelly toast and it is sitting fine but I have no wish to eat more. I have an ear ache. I really want a shower. But so far today is better than yesterday, which overall was better than the day before. I’ll take it.

Time to call my mom .

Tuesday check-in.

Tucker and I walked all the way to his pal Patch’s house this morning at about 5 AM. We were both glad to get out, as no one has walked him since I was last able to. I’ve still got what feels like a nasty head cold but no fever and almost no cough. I do feel winded when I walk up the steps fast. Hopefully that will change or I’ll never make it through a shift unloading 40 lb cartons of flour and beans.

You might think that a week with Covid in isolation and nothing to do would be a great time to catch up on the library books you have laying around. You’d be wrong. Today I actually read for about 15 minutes. That was all I could muster- and it’s a good book. It’s so much less effort to veg out in front of the TV and re-runs of Murder She Wrote.
I’ve decided not to go in for the anti-viral treatment. Seems superfluous, and anyway, I don’t know how much they cost. Ted keeps saying “We have insurance!” but I have ZERO faith that this shit we bought after he lost his employee coverage will cover anything until it actually does.

Based on my nice walk this morning and a hearty lunch, I’m thinking I may take another test tomorrow. I have no idea how “Better” I need to feel to test negative but I’m ready to find out.

Wednesday.
First coffee in a week. Turned out my mouth wanted it more than my stomach did, but no real problems. I briefly started coughing a lot last night but it didn’t last. Definitely less head congestion. Progress continues but is less dramatic.

I’ve been thinking about work and I know that even if I am negative now I am not yet up for a shift. I could probably work a few hours as a cashier, but the constant up-and-down of stocking groceries would have my head spinning and me grabbing shelves to keep from falling over. I feel bad about the crew putting out all that stock without me day after day, but I would be no help to them yet.

It’s also disorienting to be down here in the basement with nothing to do for so long. I keep checking the clock to see if it’s time to get ready for work, or time to think about starting supper, or time to get some weeding done before it gets too hot… but I do not need to or may not do those things yet. So I watch more TV or scratch at a crossword puzzle or read my computer for a while more.
Is this what being elderly will be like? Yikes!

Wednesday evening:
Covid test was positive today. Not susper surprised but I was kind of hoping.
More time to regain strength. Also more time stuck in the basement. I know Tucker frets without me, but we’re lucky to have a place this easy to isolate and still be functional.

Friday evening:
Another positive test this morning. Conflicting reports from MIT med and the CDC but bother say that if you are vaccinated, you don’t have to wait for a negative test. One says 5 days post onset + no fever for 24 hours, the other recommends 10 days. How are we to know?
Given that I still have a bit of a lingering cough and some swollen glands, I’m opting for the 10 days.

I read an entire library book today.

15 months.
That’s how long it has been since my cousin Margaret died and, just as the Covid lockdown was happening, I dealt with her belongings, cleaned out her apartment and had her cremated.

After I picked up the remains, I put them in a nice box and put them in my closet, because obviously, no sort of funeral service could happen then. In the course of my conversations with her step-daughter Elizabeth, she mentioned that Margaret told her she wanted to be interred at what she called “the family tree” where her wife Stephanie and her step-son Nathan’s ashes were buried. I said that Margaret had mentioned the family tree to me as well. We made plans that, some day in the future, we would carry out her wishes together.

“What about her brother Andrew?” Liz asked me then. “Do you suppose he will try to demand her ashes?”
I said I couldn’t imagine that he would care about them, except perhaps as a power play. We agreed that if he did order me to turn them over, rather than start a fight, I would give him some of them. I said I would open the bag and put some of them in a separate container for Liz to take to the tree when she could. It’s not like he has any clue how much the crematorium gave to me.

Fast forward 15 months.
I am standing at Costco, selecting new eyeglass frames, when I get a text from Andrew Hawk:
“Can you call me when you’re available to talk about me getting Margaret’s remains?”
Oh boy. Here we go.

I sent off a quick text to my sister Becky, and to Liz, explaining what was going on.
“Tell him he’s too damn late and block his homophobic ass” Becky said.
“Uh oh, Well, blame it on me” said Liz.

I thought for a few minutes, then replied, “In accordance with Margaret’s express wishes, I gave her remains to her daughter ELizabeth to inter with Stephanie and Nathan. This has been done.”
As indeed it has.
The second week in June, Elizabether and her partner came to Ohio. We drove to the special tree and (amid the screaming of the 17-year cicadas) buried Margaret’s remains. Before we left, at the base of the tree, I left a rock I had painted with a butterfly on the front and on the back, We remember Margaret.

About 20 minutes later, he replied, “The court just recently finalized her case. You didn’t have any authority to do that!
?? Plus you didn’t let anyone of us know?”

Oh the things I could have said.
~”Authority”? What authority did I need? I didn’t open her safety deposit box or empty her bank account: I just gave her ashes to her daughter to bury.
~Your implication that a person’s remains cannot be disposed of until their estate has completed probate is absurd. Try again.
~I think I can be forgive for assuming that, after 15 MONTHS without a word from you on that regard, you didn’t give a damn what happened to her.
~If I had let you know there is every chance that you would have tried to stop me from doing what all Margaret’s friends knew she wanted to have done, just for spite and to be the boss of everythying. Why would I enable you in that?
~Bite me.

I said none of those thing. I simply did not reply.

It is 2 days later Andrew still hasn’t contacted me any further, so hopefully, that’s the last I’ll hear from him. I’m sure my name is now mud in his family, but no more reviled than his is in mine. And Margaret is safely at rest, under the tree with the people who loved her and not the ones who judged her.

Yesterday, a year and a day after her passing, we finally gave up on “some time when we can gather in person” and had an on-line memorial service for my cousin Margaret Hawk.
Ted put together a slide-show set to the music of “Sing You Home”, which I had always thought I would sing for Margaret, since she said she wanted me and Byron to sing for her funeral. I suggested the song because it refers to that- but it worked best paired with the pictures. (and anyway: it wasn’t the Tracy show. That’s why I ended up not singing anything at all).
I was asked to go first with my remarks/eulogy/whatever and though it wasn’t my first time writing an obituary/eulogy, I struggled with this one. I worried that it was too hokey or preachy or just… I don’t know. In the end I think I did alright. It was sincere, anyway.

I felt a little anxious when members of the Hawk family startted logging onto the Zoom meeting- not that my remarks said anything even indirectly about how badly some of them treated her. I funeral is no place for that crap! I was glad that one of them went to the retirement home and helped Aunt Patty watch. I just really hoped that they have forgotten I exist- and then there I was on the screen.  Oh well. Not the Tracy Show!

Since I still have her ashes, I was asked to make a little altar of sorts and have it in the picture, as it is traditional to have the loved-one’s remains “there” for the service. That turned into a whole thing involving taking pictures off the kitchen wall and hanging up a big piece of orchid-colored fabric, dragging over a corner cupboard that was the right height and covering it was a swath of black velvet (its sometimes handy to have a crate of fabric in your basement).
I put the decorative box with ashes on the cupboard top with a candle and a tiny vase of tiny flowers on top of that. In front of the box I set a nice geode that had belonged to gramps and which Margaret gifted to me before she died, and the rock I painted with a butterfly which Margaret chose and said she liked to hold in her hand while she was praying.
I think it was nice.

I also got dressed up (well the top half of me anyway, which was all you could see) and even changed my earrings for the first time in a year! I put on a litle mascara- and my eyes felt weird and heavy the whole time and I took it off again right after it was over. One year without and you realize you dont need that crap any longer! Plus I’m old and no one else cares.

I enjoyed seeing the names I remember from long ago at New Creation Church popping up as they logged on. I think there were about 40 “attendees”.
Afterwords about 15 people stayed on the call and chatted for a little while, until Tucker came in and positively glared at me to let me know he wanted to be fed. When I excused myself, that seemed to be the signal for everyone to log off.

I’m glad we did something at last. Such a lovely, loving person deserved a send-off. It was so unfortunate that her passing coincided with the perfect storm of the pandemic lock-down. Someday “when we can travel safely” (which will be never if the Covidiots in this country have their way!) Elizabeth is going to fly east and take Margaret’s ashes to the tree where the ashes of Margaret’s partner Stephanie are buried, so she can join her there.
Maybe I’ll sing for her there.

********************

Hello everyone. My name is Tracy and I am Margaret’s cousin.
I would like to talk to you about what Margaret was like as a child, but I can’t, because I didn’t really know her then. I know we met occasionally as kids, but I really have no memory of her other than as the owner of the box of hand-me-downs that our grandma would sometimes bring.
It was my great good fortune, however, to get to know Margaret as an adult. We discovered that we both had a love of rocks and geodes inherited from our grandfather and shared memories about our grandma’s thrifty ways and her amazing whole wheat raisin bread.

I wish I had been able to run and play with Margaret the cousin, but my life was immeasurably richer for knowing Margaret the woman, and Margaret the pastor and shepherd of the flock.
I came to New Creation once, at my sister’s suggestion, just to say hello to my cousin- and I stayed for years. It was easy to stay because the church community was a wonderful place where I felt accepted and welcomed… but the reason I stayed was Margaret. Every week she said something that really resonated with my life and in my heart, something that kept me coming back for more.

She was blessed to have a lot of wonderful and talented people to lean on for help in her ministry; still I don’t think I mis-state when I say that like Peter, Margaret was the rock upon which that church was built for so many years.

After a time, when my kids were in school and I was looking for something more to contribute to the world, she asked me if I would be her office assistant for the salary of “consider it a tithe to the church”, and I did. I kept us stocked in paper, figured out the weird paging system for printing out the bulletins we had back then, and spent a lot of time deleting icky spam email that got sent to the church.
Eventually I was given the grand title of “Music director”, choosing hymns and rehearsing & leading our “Choir” which usually consisted of between 3-5 people. That job was a wonderful gift to me, because I have an undergraduate degree in music which I had written off as a waste of time and something I would never use. Margaret found a way to turn that “frivolous” education into something useful, and joyful.

She was like that.
Margaret was patient and kind, cheerful and usually able to stay calm when things were boiling over around her.  Now I’m not going to paint her as some kind of saint: that would make her sound boring, and she certainly was not! Like anyone she got sad and lonely, frustrated and angry, but always seemed able to put that aside when someone needed her.
She gave of herself unsparingly, but hated to ask for help from others. When things got tough she always tried to make a way out of no way and pull herself through.
In a life with so much difficulty and loss, she knew despair but never surrendered to it.

Because what she was most of all, I think, was faithful.
She had faith in the many, many friends that she helped and who were there to help her. She had faith that life was still worth living if you just let it be.
She had faith that there was a greater love encircling her, promising not that there would not be storms, but that she would not be swept away and lost in them.

Her faith allowed her to be both a realist and an optimist. Her faith shone out in her eyes and echoed in that chuckling laugh she had, in the kind words and steady strength she always seemed to find in times of crisis. Her faith radiated warmth and it kindled faith in others.

Because Margaret believed in the transformative power of love, she transformed others.

With all that she suffered and lost in life Margaret never lost sight of the fact that she still had in abundance that thing that matters most: Love.
Margaret gave love by listening, by laughing, by giving advice, by praying for help, and by rolling up her sleeves and giving it, by standing up for people when they felt weak and by speaking truth to power.

She did a lot in her too-short life. But it’s not those many kind and important things that Margaret did which have us all here today (at our computers in our homes around the country) to remember her.  It’s the love she felt, and made us feel: a love that inspired her to do those things, which calls us here today.

All we are in this world is love.
All we are, when we come to the end ouf our days
Is the people who love us and the ones that we’ve loved.
All I’ll leave when I go is love.
all we are I this world is love.

Margaret left behind her great love. It is right that we gather to celebrate Margaret and talk about the reasons we loved her, because the love we felt for Margaret helped to make her who she was, just as her love for us is now forever a part of who we are, and who we will always be.

I miss her.
My life is better because I knew her.
Through her love of us and our love for her, Margaret lives on.

It was a solemn occasion, I realized.

Yesterday Ted and I drove an hour south to Logan to get our first Covid-19 vaccine injection from a pharmacy there that started booking appointments for our age group before local ones did. It was a sunny day and an easy drive so we decide to just get it done.

That morning I dressed more carefully than usual. I chose a colorful shirt, my nicest jeans and my good black suede boots. I even put on a little bit of eye make-up.
I laughed at myself as I was doing it, joking that we are all such shut-ins these days with so few chances to go anywhere that I was even dressing up to spend 5 seconds getting a shot. How silly!
I even moved my wallet into my best small purse.

On the drive down, chatting quietly and listening to music, I found myself oddly touched with- awe, I guess, over what we were doing. The two of us, embarking together on our part of this step to… change the world.
I took Ted’s hand and said how amazing it actually is that humans, many of whom are too stupid to come in our of the rain, have been able to unlock both the secret of how something as tiny as a virus works and causes illness, and figure out how to stop them. Polio. Smallpox. And now Covid-19.
In a year the best minds in the world solved the puzzle and in doing so, changed the world.
And now we were about to be part of the change: part of the growing herd of “Humans Who Do Not Have to Hide in Our Houses Because the Covid Virus Will Not Harm Us.”
Incredible.

And I realized that this was why I had dressed with such care that morning. It wasn’t that I am such a shut-in that even going to get a shot felt like an outing. It’s that this was actually a very solemn occasion. One dresses nicely for the rituals of life.

The last time I got dressed up was last April when I went to the crematorium to collect my cousin Margaret’s ashes. I knew I would speak to only 2 other people there, and we would both be masked and standing on opposite sides of the room, but, with no funeral or memorial service possible for her at that time… well, it was kind of her funeral. One shows respect by dressing nicely for a funeral, and so I did.

Yesterday, although we just sat in an almost empty room, got our temperstures checked, arms swabbed and then (after a 15 minute wait to make sure we weren’t going to have an anaphylatic reaction to the serum) sent on our way, we were taking part in a rite of passage, of sorts. One that, at that very moment, people all across the globe were taking part in, or waiting for their turn to take part in.

Except of course for the agitators, bioterrorists and just plain fools who will not: because freedom! Because conspiracies (it implants a government tracking device!) and ignorance ( it will alter your DNA and you won’t be human!) and just general “if those people made it: if they are for it then I won’t take it, even if deep inside I know it will save my life” cussedness.
It’ll be hard to get herd immunity when 40% of the herd refuses to get immune and instead rips off their masks and goes to bars and gyms and parties while Covid-19 is still out there killing people at a somewhat reduced but still alarming rate.

The people who never criticized the Orange Idiot (who said that windmills cause cancer and maybe we should drop a little nuke in hurricanes to blow them apart and Covid is just like the flu and it will magically disappear soon) when he basically ignored the pandemic, allowing it to claim hundreds of thousands of lives, are now criticizing Joe Biden because people are still dying.
As if “red” states lifting all Covid restrictions in the name of “not letting the government tell us what to do” has no part in that. As if the Covidiot mask-deniers who charge maskless into stores that require masks and attack staff and patrons who try to remove them aren’t trying to undo all the good the new administration is doing. (We’d rather die than let a Democrat help us!)

Thanks to the Biden Covid team, we are now on track to have enough vaccine to innoculate *every* adult in America by the end of May!! The trick is getting it done, of course. That’s a big job and the $7B earmarked to help state and local authorities set up and staff more vaccination sites is being blocked by the Republicans who… want more people to die, I guess. (What other explanation is there? They also tried to yank health insurance from millions of people during a pandemic so clearly their “Pro-life” policy doesn’t extend to any actual, living people)

But those of us with functioning brains and human decency are wearing our masks and lining up for our shots and dreaming of a day when we can just run into the store for a jug of milk, hug our kids and eat at a restaurant again.
Until the next one comes along– and it will. Hopefully when it does we will not have a narcissistic sociopath in charge and won’t play politics while a half-million people die.

I took a few pictures and found myself thinking about making a covid memory box, with some of my masks and my mask bin and my vaccination card, to tell the future that I was a part of this.

Yeah definitely I should hang on to a bunch of those masks…