Grieving For What We Have Lost

2020-03-23 (posted in blog)

Fear, worry, anxiety, panic... these are the emotions that I expected to envelop me right now. Sitting in the midst of a slow motion disaster that I have felt was coming. Not having a bunker stocked with the 5000 serving shelf stable barrel of Costco rations, automatic weapons, and a god damned life-straw™ plus having children (12 and nearly 16 years old) and parents in their seventies, I should feel ALL of those things. My BP should be 150/90 with a heart rate to match. Wolfing down my tiny hoard of protein pasta, canned beans, and protein bars -- screaming as the sheer mass of all the corona-covid-coverage eats cancerously into my cortex, I should be dead already. But I am not. My BP is normal and my Apple Watch tells me that my resting heart rate is still in the 50s. How is this possible?

I think I have the answer:

I was freaked out 6 weeks ago - I knew that we were headed this way - this is not a shock to me anymore I am 6 weeks jaded
I am grieving

Grief is hard. I have been lucky and not had a hefty helping of grief yet in my life. My parents, my brother, my children, my friends are all ok, my own health is ok. I have had cats die (it sucks, bad), I got divorced (super not fun), and I have had the trauma of being dumped from work after pouring all I have into it and the people that worked for me (that is a story for another day), but I find that now I am truly grieving. I am sad for all that has changed in such a short time. The things that I have enjoyed that may never be the same (at least in my lifetime), the small businesses that I love that will struggle and fail, the thousands (millions?) that will suffer, the sheer hubris/insanity/incompetence of the country that I was born, raised, and lived in all of my life. How did we get here? Why do we prioritize more over better? These are not the parts that I grieve for, The world that we have built to this point is far from perfect. We have been complacent, complicit, and negligent in so many ways. I sit here like so many others having no idea what to do to help. However, even with all of its problems, I grieve for what what is lost. I steel myself to embrace the new, the unknown.

There are many things happening out there that are great and inspiring. Here are some that I have found personally inspiring:

Jose Andres and the World Central Kitchen
The 9128.live weekend live takeover and excellent Ambient music in general
Scott Gottlieb - the voice of reason that the we need
Kenji Lopez-Alt for writing this food safety guide as it relates to the coronavirus (clearing the FUD)
Healthcare workers across the world 👏🙏
Everyone that is taking this seriously and not hoarding and staying the fuck home

There are also the many wonderful small businesses that are feeling the crunch that are important to me:

Mobius Records