Sadness and Hope

Though the virus had already spread to America by January of 2020, it wasn’t until mid-March, give or take a few days, that it became real for most of us. It’s been a year since. Even if the media weren’t talking about this grim anniversary, and even if I hadn’t noted the particular day that we started our lockdown, I think I’d know that it had been a year. It feels like a year. It feels like time for the kind of grieving that comes with the first anniversary of a tragic event.

But this is not the anniversary of just one tragic event. It’s the anniversary of the realization that tragic events were unfolding all around us and that every day for the foreseeable future would bring more losses. And the losses haven’t stopped, so how can we properly grieve for them? We’re at the right time but not the right place, and that makes this anniversary harder.

We may have reached a turning point, though. Slowly but surely the vaccines are being distributed. Some of the people I love most in this world have already gotten theirs. Our lives could return to some semblance of normalcy by summer, and next year we might be celebrating the anniversary of that instead. We have that hope, at least.