Between comfort and joy

On the same day we learned that my husband's cousin's wife had been hospitalized with Covid, we also learned that a colleague's horrible deadly diagnosis was not cancer after all. For more than a month he'd been living with a death sentence and then the tsar told the firing squad to put down their guns, and he couldn't have been more relieved.

Taken together, these two bits of news should have averaged out to make it a meh kind of day, but extreme news doesn't work that way any more than extreme weather does: if today is freezing and tomorrow is boiling, I'll feel it deeply both times. 

Yesterday I had coffee with the colleague who received the reprieve; he described the whiplash effect of the shifting diagnoses, and he's delighted to be out and about personally thanking all the people who helped him and his wife deal with the impact of his surgery and recovery. It was a joyful meeting, full of hope and cheer.

But also yesterday, the cousin with Covid died after three weeks in the ICU. She was always the fun one, full of life and energy and gossip and interesting ideas for outings, so it's hard to imagine her stilled and silenced. Her husband, of course, is devastated, as are other family members and friends. I'm sad and distracted and angry at this stupid virus, though it's hard to know what to do with that anger.

Covid has required us to get comfortable with case counts and death rates and big scary numbers, but when the numbers hit home, they still hurt. It's as if we've all been standing in front of the firing squad for the last two years, uncertain whether the guns are aiming our way. Some will receive a reprieve, but for others, the reprieve will come too late.

So what can we do? I'll reach out one hand to congratulate my colleague on his new cancer-free life and I'll reach out the other to comfort those mourning the loss of a beloved family member, and somehow I'll hover between the two extremes, feeling both deeply and doing my best to carry on.