how to wring humor out of troubling times

bamboo

"The human capacity for burden is like bamboo,
far more flexible than you'd believe
at first glance."
~Jodi Picoult~

It shouldn't surprise any of us that people are responding to the Covid-19 crisis the way they are...with worry, fear, sorrow, resentment, and anger. Some have suffered through the illness themselves, while others have watched loved ones suffer and die because of it. People have lost their jobs, and therefore, their income. Some are stuck at home with an abuser. The kids are starting to get on their nerves. They've had enough.

"There is nothing worse

than thinking you are well enough.

Don't turn your head.

Keep looking at the bandaged place.

That's where the light enters you.

And don't believe for a moment that

you are healing yourself."

~Jelaluddin Rumi~

What might come as a surprise is the fact that some people have found ways to wring humor out of these troubling times. It may seem inappropriate to trivialize the tragedy unfolding around us by making jokes about it, but this is another example of the duality that keeps our heads on straight. Some of us are well, some are ill. Some are scared, others are unconcerned. Some look on the bright side, others are stuck in the dark. 

I had to smile at a few posts that appeared this week.

.

If you're not ready to entertain humor yet, maybe you can appreciate something of beauty, or sweetness. 

If it's still too soon for that, you could simply go to the window and inhale the fragrance of honeysuckle, or check out the tender new growth down in the woods, or listen to the birds singing their little hearts out. 

If you simply can't muster a smile right now, don't worry. It will come. You will get through this. You'll know it the next time--or the first time, if it hasn't already happened for you--someone or something brings a smile to your lips. 

"It is both a blessing and a curse

to feel everything so very deeply."

~David Jones~

jan

why this? why now? why me?

Yesterday was pretty much a perfect day for me. It helps that I appreciate solitude, so social isolation is comfortable for me. It also helps that I don't suffer food or financial insecurity...I don't like to cook and I'm not "a shopper."

That said, I got up early in the morning, had a bite to eat, spent an hour in meditation, and took my (almost) daily five-mile walk in the brilliant sunshine under a cloudless blue sky. While listening to beautiful music. Spring treated me to vibrant shades of translucent green. No one else was out.

It would have been a totally perfect morning except for one problem. The rest of the world is suffering. The majority of humanity is either sick, worried they will get sick, or grieving for someone who has been sick. People are scared. Angry. Broken. It hardly seems fair. It makes you wonder. It keeps you guessing. Why this? Why now? Why me?

"There are times when explanations,

no matter how reasonable,

just don't seem to work."

~Fred Rogers~

But such is the duality of existence, the inevitable interplay of joy and sorrow, of pleasure and pain, of hope and despair. The struggle between attraction and aversion, between surrender and control, between humility and pride. Between "can" and "can't", "will" and "won't."

Today is a different kind of day for me. A wave of sadness crashed on shore this morning.

One of my best friends brought her husband home from the hospital. To die. It had nothing to do with Covid-19. He has not been well for a while. There was nothing more the doctors could do for him. The sad thing is that my friend will be alone with him at the end.  She will not be comforted or supported or cheered by the near presence of family or friends. She will be alone.

"We're all just

walking each other home."

~Ram Dass~

As the tide of sorrow recedes, though, it will leave a few sweet consolations behind. The comfort of knowing that she has these last few days or weeks together with him. That she is able to bathe and feed him herself, to tell him everything she needs him to know, to kiss him goodbye.

"Whatever is good for your soul,

do that."

~unknown, but claimed by many~

Today I'm going to walk by the lake. That usually helps.

jan

a grim reality

The Covid-19 pandemic has touched each and every one of us in ways we couldn't have imagined just a few weeks ago. From disbelief to fear, from illness to exhaustion, from annoyance to anger to grief to guilt, it has invaded every aspect of our lives. We weren't prepared for schools and businesses to close. We believed our health care system was infallible. We never thought we'd have to worry about affording or procuring food and supplies. We thought we were pretty safe.

"Expectation is the root

of all heartache."

~William Shakespeare~

It has been a challenge to reconfigure our lives just when things were going so well for so many of us. It isn't easy to home school your children, or to work from home when you've never done it before. It's annoying, if not maddening, to have to clean and sanitize everything you come into contact with over and over again, to don a face mask every time you wander outside, to worry about every cough or sneeze. It's unsettling to witness family members and friends taking ill. It's downright scary to think it could happen to you.

But this is the worst thing, I think. Worse than social distancing. Worse than quarantine. Worse than watching the emergency room door close behind someone you love because you are not permitted to be with them in the hospital. Worse than abandoning them to their fate.

"Love knows not its own depth

until the hour of separation."

~Khalil Gibran~

The worst thing is knowing that the person you love may be left to suffer alone. That they could die unattended. That there will be no loving presence at their bedside to support and comfort them. No song or prayer to see them off. No funeral. No burial. At the end of life, they may be assigned a body bag in a refrigerated truck, and, as we learned just today...some will end up in a mass grave. A grim reality that offends everything we hold sacred.

As if it weren't hard enough to have watched family and friends fall ill, suffer, and die, how will we ever bear the heartbreak of coerced separation? The void of utter helplessness? How will we survive the tidal wave of bitterness, despair, and sorrow we feel?

What is the way through? How will we rise again? 

"I am wounded but not slain.

I will lay me down to bleed a while.

Then I will rise to fight again."

~John Dryden~

What would you do if someone you love died like this? How do you dignify and honor a life that passes abruptly, cruelly, unjustly? 

How do you want to be remembered if it happens to you?

"When someone you love
becomes a memory,
the memory becomes a treasure."
~author unknown~

jan