unimaginable

"It's Quiet Uptown" for those who want to listen...

This afternoon, after a bizarre mid-April snow shower became a bright, sunny day, I looked out the window and saw neighbors in the street. Kids were on bikes, parents were chatting from a safe-ish distance. Just a month ago, I would have witnessed this scene and immediately joined them. Instead, I gauged how difficult it would be to actually keep space between that many kids, and decided to take Jolene to the back yard where we would play alone. The caution feels necessary: one neighbor is still going to work every day as a delivery driver, in and out of stores in many different towns. Another neighbor is 6 years old and was only recently declared cancer-free. The risks are real, the stakes are high.

*

After a while of playing outside, enjoying the quiet expanse of our backyard, a man in his 80's came up to the gate, holding two pink roses in his hand. Jolene put down her dinosaur toys and we walked over together.

He held out the roses. "One for the best artist in the world, and one for the best baker in the world."
I thanked him, noting that he had taken the time to snip the thorns off first. Jolene beamed and told him that pink roses are her favorite. He smiled back at her.

"That was delicious," he said, referring to the banana chocolate chip bread I'd left on his doorstep.
"I'm glad you liked it," I said. "I figured your kids have you covered for dinners forever."
He laughed. "Oh yes, I'm going to have to clean out the fridge."

Quiet.

Then, "It was just such a surprise." I nodded. We'd shared many moments like this over the past few days.

His wife had just died, rolled out of the house in a hospital bed on a beautiful sunny day. They'd come back from vacation early because she'd gotten sick; an MRI revealed a brain tumor, and two weeks later, she was gone.

We'd been leaving notes, and flowers, and Jolene had drawn him pictures that she thought would make him smile. At night she keeps praying that he won't be too sad. But more than that, we couldn't offer. Social distancing keeps us separated, and the nonstop busyness of working and parenting and schooling and grocery auditing and mask acquiring and texting everyone about how they're doing leaves no room for sitting and reflecting on a life gone in an instant, a woman we will no longer see on her daily walk around the neighborhood.

*

Exactly one week earlier, while she was still in hospice care at home and their driveway was full of cars as the children and grandchildren held vigil, another neighbor died alone in the hospital. He was 44 years old, and had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer 6 months earlier. Despite treatment, he was getting weaker. He'd gone into the hospital alone because of the new restrictions on visiting, so his wife and two young children were not there for his final breath.

The celebration of life must wait until it is safe to gather together.

*

Just checking in to see how you guys are doing!

How many times have I received this text? How many times have I sent it?

Some respond with sarcasm, or memes depicting some misery of quarantine. I always respond that we're doing ok, it's a little stressful, but we're so grateful for our house, our yard, and our resources. It's true--on most days, we are doing ok. My husband and I love spending time together. Our daughter doesn't have mandatory classroom time on Zoom. My semester is almost over. We have groceries and back-up groceries. It seems silly to respond with anything more dramatic than, "We're doing ok."

*

Tonight as we tucked our daughter into bed, we prayed for people going through hard things unrelated to coronavirus--for our neighbor who had lost his wife, for the one who lost her husband, for our little friend down the road to remain cancer-free. It is striking to remember how much life is still going on even though so much of life has come to a screeching halt. And yet...who has time to sit and process or reflect or grieve? When can you be alone to do that? How can you sit still when you have to disinfect the doorknobs and figure out how to make the milk last until Sunday? And how can any of that matter when your spouse died alone at the hospital?

I decided to take a bath. I put in my earbuds, and my phone was still playing the soundtrack to Hamilton. "It's Quiet Uptown" began, and the gorgeous lyrics and harmonies began, and as I was on my knees picking up my daughter's bath toys so I could set them aside for my own bath, I became paralyzed. I stopped mid-reach, a toy in my hand, and my mind froze. I assumed at first that I was responding to the horror of losing a child, which is the context for the beginning of the song. The word that consistently flows through the song is "unimaginable":

push away the unimaginable
learn to live with the unimaginable
working through the unimaginable
trying to do the unimaginable
we push away what we can never understand / we push away the unimaginable

The song describes life in its hardest moments: losing a child, infidelity, forgiveness, quiet.

I found myself crying quietly as I listened to the song over and over, a cathartic release of being able to finally feel what was happening, to finally put into words exactly what life is right now: quiet, unimaginable.

*

And so our days go. They are loud inside the walls of our house as we juggle our schedules and do puzzles and play games and answer our daughter's questions, but they are quiet outside. Human beings are astonishingly good at adapting, so in the quickness to establish a new way of life (even as we hope and expect it to be temporary), there simply hasn't been time to stop, think, and ask, "What is this new way of life?"

Tonight, through the power of music and the chance to be alone at the end of a long day, I could finally answer that question. Quiet. And unimaginable.