I have been gobsmacked by the Covid monster this past week and learned, in the most humbling of ways, what it feels like to have all the time in the world to write and zero brainpower to compose anything. For a while it was difficult, even, to describe what was happening … my body felt … weird … my brain was in a fog …
It was like I was floating in some netherworld, caught between lucid and what I’m guessing a lot of drug trips feel like. Not really here, not really there. Really, really tired.
Everyone, of course, has had different ideas about how I should handle it. I have been content to just let it run its course, fighting the compulsion to complain of boredom, fighting the all-American power through and out of this mentality, just trusting that it came when it did for a reason and that reasons doesn’t always reveal themselves in a timely fashion.
There is a LOT happening around me right now: tiny Peru is throwing up its mighty Fair for the first time in three years. This is a very big deal here and I feel a bit of a loser, missing this major event. In the family circle there were (are) three birthdays this past week, a wedding and a baby due today. I’m supposed to speak at a fairly big event in Manchester on Sunday, not to mention another Sunday morning not at the pulpit.
The world, I know all too well, moves on without us, one way or another. Sickness is a big slice of humble pie that way, when you sit back and watch the beehive of activity continue without your input, without your presence. None of us are nearly as indispensable as we’d like to think we are.
Lest I fall into the trap of self-pity, I started reading Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms this week. I found a certain warm camaraderie in learning that she, too, grew up in Saratoga Springs, but our overlaps end there. She was diagnosed with leukemia in her 20s; the book is her journey through all of that. A week with Covid ain’t nothing but a thing compared to what she endured (and continues to endure, it seems).
I’m still struggling to string thoughts together and so I might not be able to segue reasonably into what my heart keeps tugging me toward writing about: a friend I had named FloJo (my nickname for her).
I was working in hospice as a chaplain at the time when I met FloJo. She was chair-bound and living in what seemed like very challenging circumstances: with her husband who was also dealing with significant health issues in a house with no running water. This kind of thing is not unusual here in Vermont where poverty combined with pride can often leave people to subsist in incredibly dubious conditions. I learned early on in making home visits not to judge, just to keep a keen eye out for truly dangerous signs.
FloJo was very resistant to my visits at first and I learned why as we slowly came to know one another: as a child she had been betrayed by every adult and every institution that was supposed to have kept her safe. She had been tossed around in foster care, abused by her captors (the only suitable word), separated from her siblings and forced to begin working at a very young age.
She had never had the chance to finish high school and it was clear to me that this was a great disappointment to her.
It didn’t take much for me to arrange to have the principal of the high school she would have graduated from present her with a diploma. A few phone calls, some record-checking. We told the kids, we told FloJo, and one sunny fall day a few years ago she dressed in her finest, got herself out of her chair and onto the couch and received the piece of paper that gave her the peace of mind that had been stolen from her decades earlier. She died the following spring.
I was in awe of FloJo. Because in spite of having endured a childhood and young adulthood of every imaginable kind of pain, she kept going. She worked hard, she raised good kids, she eventually met a good man who treated her with dignity and respect.
She didn’t hate anyone, which was incredible to me. It might have been a survival tactic, I don’t know. I would imagine that Flo had to tell herself a lot of stories, bury a lot of evidence in order to keep breathing and in this world. She was peaceful, grateful for what she had. We laughed a lot when we were together.
I meet a lot of people in this life. I have met a lot of people. People you have heard of. You would be impressed if I named names. But there’s something I need you to know: there is not a person on the planet who could shift the contents of my heart the way Miss FloJo did and does, every time I think of her there, sitting in her living room, surrounded by all that sick person detritus. I will never forget her reaction to receiving her high school diploma, something every one of us takes for granted. I left her house in tears that day and I cry still, every time I think of her. Not because of her hardscrabble life or her suffering, her lack, but really because I know that even if I live another thousand lifetimes I will never be as amazing, as strong, as gorgeous as Miss Flo.
God bless Flo and God bless you. What a hero she was and an admirable survivalist. I know she watches over you and blesses you.
Nice