These Were Our Years

A dispatch from the summer of 2021.

I wonder if they’ll believe us when we tell them how bad it got. In my mind, when I imagine us talking about it, it’s dead and gone but we’re still alive — you and me and everybody who is still here. We are old and we are healthy. Can you see it, all of us, creaky in our bones but thriving, dredging up memories at the beach, on the stoop, beside a lazy river in the sun?

I know, of course, that we won’t all live through this, but I still like to play pretend. I like it more now even than when I was a kid.

I know, too, that it may live forever, mutate and grow and change and stay among us as long as there are any of us left on the planet. Like us, it is programmed for survival.

When I say that I picture it dead and gone, I really just mean the worst of it — the way it is now, strong and so easily passed among us. I imagine that part being long over, when we describe it to them.

Picture us telling children about this, the ones who aren’t born yet and won’t be born until after it’s done. They’re at the beach, or on the stoop, or beside the lazy river. Maybe it’s a family picnic. Maybe it’s a block party. Maybe one of them says something that triggers a memory — they mention wanting a mask for Halloween, or they say they hate being outside when it’s so hot and they wish they could just stay inside all the time, all day.

Maybe one of them says what I would always say to my own mother: “Tell me a story from when you were younger.”

Will they think we are exaggerating? Will they think we’re making it a bigger deal than it was? How do children regard the recollections of elders who went through something so massive and catastrophic, something that cut through swaths of the whole population? It’s been awhile since I was little and asked my grandparents about their wars. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that my grandfather told me about watching a Luftwaffe pilot, writhing in flames, jumping to his death from the sky.

“We didn’t hit him,” he said quickly, and I don’t know if that was true. He was a tailgunner.

My parents, children of the late ’50s, have no such stories. And many of my grandparents’ generation didn’t tell their own children these tales. They waited, not on purpose, but perhaps until the stories couldn’t stay inside any longer. Grandchildren hear things that children do not.

I don’t have children, or grandchildren. I am 40, and I know people my age who have both. If I end up with any, it will be a surprise — a pleasant one, I suspect, as I enjoy kids more the older I get. When I was a child, I found other children to be somewhat frightening. I am taller than most of them now, which helps.

“Tell me a story from when you were younger.”

“We called it the new normal,” I’ll say, and they’ll wrinkle up their noses as if to say What the hell does that mean? and really, what does it mean anymore? It’s not new. It’s not normal. It’s tired and bedraggled and wearying and it is not how life ought to be but it is how life is. Governments collapse; screaming refugees hang onto departing jets; the other week, the ocean was on fire, and not for the first time. None of this is new. That doesn’t make it normal.

If I am honest, I will say, “In those days, I would wonder why I was sad suddenly, and exhausted, when I was lucky to have a place to live, and clean water, and a job, and a benevolent demon cat, and a family, and friends, and my books and my poetry to protect me. I would wonder if the wave of despair could simply be biochemical, if maybe I needed to take more medication, do more exercise, drink more water, pray on my hands and knees more than once a day instead of just once, half-awake each morning. I would wonder what I could do to produce the right response. And then I would remember how life works for humans, and I would think, ‘To be sad and frightened and weary is the right response. People are dying. People are in pain. I can do some of the helpful things, the good habits, the healthy behaviors, and I must do them, but sometimes the bad feelings will come in. This is the nature of the time. I can hold hope in my heart and anger too and the rage and the love alike can weigh me down. This is not a failure to heal but an affirmation that I am alive, that I am real, that I am still here and to be here means to be present for all of it, all of it.’ And so those were the days when I learned to be there for all of it, because I could hide from the illness as best I could but I could not hide from the way I felt about it. Do you see?”

I hope they will look at me politely and nod, uncomprehending. I hope they can’t relate in the least.

My friend who worked at the hospital, he called them meat trucks, they pulled the bodies out of houses for transport, I will think, but I won’t say it. Hundreds of them in freezer trucks for months, because they can’t always find the families and they don’t know what to do with them. That was in New York.

They took forever to cremate my friend, and he didn’t even die from it, it was something else, but the place where they burn the bodies was too busy. That was in California. He was too young and I still miss him. I won’t say it.

A year and a half after it started here and the pediatric wards were full of kids, all sick, some dying, because so many adults wouldn’t get the vaccine or wear masks and so many kids couldn’t get the vaccine. That was in Texas, and other places that vote the Texas way. Kids don’t need to hear about that shit.

They’ll run and play. They’ll go off and read a book, like I used to at parties where I wished I could just be inside by myself. They’ll eat something. They’ll laugh. They’ll fight and they’ll make up. They’ll ignore me, because I am from another time, and this will be their year, not mine.

They are not yet born, these future children of other people or me, at a party yet to be given by someone on a street or a riverbank or in a field or backyard. I do not know if I will live to meet these small people or bore them with my old stories. I do not know anything, except that everyone dies eventually, and this is both a sorrow and a relief.

Every day I read the sad announcements from strangers and from friends. They are all different and they are all the same. They bleed into one another. The longer you stick around, the more people you lose. Everything happens for a reason. I will remember you. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again. I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I will always love you. I will raise you up on eagle’s wings. Gone too soon. Born sleeping. One in my arms, one in my heart. I hope you’re at peace. This one’s for you, pal. RIP to a real one. I hope you see Grandma up there. Dad is waiting for you. Our God is an awesome God. Goddammit I miss you. Ave Maria, and so on and so forth, Jesus fucking Christ, world without end, amen.

I have a memorial T-shirt. I cut the collar off and wore it to take an exercise lesson so that I live longer, with a better ass. I helped write an obituary. I went to a funeral on the Internet. I had a dream and in it you were still alive. I keep dyeing my hair. I don’t drink, especially when I want to.

I don’t sleep like I used to. Nobody sings me lullabies. It is 6 a.m. I hear the traffic on the BQE: bread trucks, milk trucks, meat trucks, people. The birds are awake and singing to each other.

The sagging roof across the street still hasn’t collapsed. I check every day to see if it’s given up. I suspect it has a few years left in it. Whether they will be good years, I can’t say. My God, my God, I am so happy and so angry to still be here.