The Real 2020 Challenge
Murder Hornets. Pandemic. Unsealed caves. Ancient sarcophagi. Just when I thought this year had dealt its most unexpected blows, I was blindsided yet again. This particular brand of unexpected heartache has been very personal, and yet there are lessons I’m learning that we all can benefit from.
I have lost my companion. It’s been almost a month, enough time for me to sit and write about it without falling apart. Never will there be enough time that I don’t acutely feel the empty space he left. The grief I’ve gone through has absolutely added to the “really, 2020?!” feeling I think we all share, but it’s also made me see that attitude from a different perspective.
Winston was my 10-year-old Corgi. And before I go on, I have to recognize that it was difficult to put that sentence in past tense. Winston is my Corgi. Winston will always be my Corgi. But he’s dead now, and so it makes sense to say was, I suppose. He was my companion through many stages of this wild and precious life. He was soft when I’d grown hard and jaded. He was my comfort when my heart softened — and then broke — as I learned to let go of the stable life I’d built. He was, quite simply, there. As I wrote my novels. As I danced in the living room. As I cried on the floor. As I traveled, as I made dinner, as I lazed about on Saturdays and came home tired on weekdays.
Everywhere he went, he lit people up. Look at that photo and tell me you’re not smiling. From construction workers to children to savvy Manhattanites, joy followed in his path. He had a big personality but the softest heart. Stubborn and clever, but wanted nothing more than to be petted and among his people. When he fell ill, a network of love and support from literally around the globe poured in, thanks to the beautiful people I’m networked with on Instagram.
He died suddenly, perfect one day, listless the next, and then, within two weeks, gone. Meningoencephalitis, an autoimmune disease where his body turned on itself. I had to make The Call and let him go. There were options for aggressive treatment that offered a slim chance to revive him, but no. He was suffering, the doctor said, and he was too far gone. I couldn’t ask my beloved boy to hold in such a condition just so I could have a little more time with him. He had lived such a brilliant, beautiful life. To keep him breathing but not cognizant would’ve been cruel. He died surrounded by his family, told he was a good boy, and reassured that it was okay for him to rest now. It was a gentle exit, fitting for the gentle life he lived.
And yet, guilt has haunted me. I have battled guilt over ending his life, guilt over not having known sooner he was seriously ill, guilt that I couldn’t do more. None of these are rational. None of them even plausible. They are grief, and I know that even when I’m gripped with them. They are the thoughts that come when I want to undo the fact that he’s gone, that my house feels so empty without him, that I’ll never again do all the hundreds of tiny, daily traditions that we shared. I know I couldn’t have done more. I know he lived a life filled with adventure and love. I know he died before old age could decay him slowly and take him little by little.
I’d still move the earth to bring him back to me.
But that’s grief,in its raw form. The desperate wish to undo the loss, coupled with the sense of acute absence. You want to do something, anything, to change the state you’re in.
Read that last line again. Kind of a summation of 2020, isn’t it?
There’s a lot of validity to the idea that we are all grieving this year. On varying levels of consciousness and with a wide range of intensity, loss has been a defining feature of the year. We have all had to make The Call to let go of those routines and traditions that made up our version of normal. We have all had to adjust to the empty space where concerts, gatherings, stability used to be. We have all had at least one moment where we wished desperately to undo this year.
The danger here is the idea that you can’t change it, and so you lose. Winston is gone and I can’t bring him back. The virus is here and you can’t go outside. The government is in chaos and we can’t fix it. We lose ourselves in this mindset without realizing it’s happened. It gets to be so much that we feel beaten down with all the things we can’t change. And then we get angry or give up.
The truth isn’t nearly as bleak, nor as simple, as all that. There are things beyond our control, and yet we cling to them emotionally every time we wish they were different. Inevitable losses, a global pandemic — these aren’t things any individual can ever stop from happening*. Why then do we wallow in guilt and spend time fantasizing a different reality? We were never meant to fight those battles. We feed hopelessness when, instead of focusing on the things we can control, we spend our time bemoaning all we cannot.
You can control so much. You are in charge of your happiness. You are worth devoting time to. You are able to make tiny changes that give you freedom to smile a little more and struggle just a little bit less. You can change how you approach a situation, how you respond to the challenges life throws at you, and how kind you are to yourself. And you can certainly change the government by voting. However you want us to move as a nation, you have the power of the ballot.
Losing Winston has charged me with a sense of duty to carry his spirit on in this world. He was the smile we needed, but he was strong, too. He could be funny, playful, and a touchstone of comfort and stability all by simply being. Our lives are more complex than a dog’s, obviously, but there are lessons to take here. This is more of the energy we need in order to heal our collective wounds.
I cannot change that he’s gone. I can’t change the pandemic*. But I’m not meant to do either of those things. What I can do is encourage you to look for the beauty in your day and release guilt that you’re not doing more. Know that you, too, deserve gentleness and whimsy. And never doubt your power to brighten your own life. Control what you can. Make peace with the rest.
*You can help stop the spread. Wear a mask. Distance. Wash your hands. Talk about control? That’s it right there.
