Some thoughts after being fully vaccinated…

I am writing this blog post a few hours after taking my second dose of the Moderna vaccine on a partly cloudy and partly sunny Saturday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My feelings are somewhat like the weather today. I am extremely thankful to be fortunate enough to receive a vaccine which will hopefully help lower the spread of COVID-19. On the other hand, my mind races. I think of faces of those I know who have lost a loved one or loved ones to this disease. I think of those I do not even know. I think of bodies and of faces. I think of coffee cups sitting half-filled on the dresser with a pastel lipstick print etched on the brim. I think of an empty and unmade bed. I think of shoes left by the door. I think of books left unread on the shelf. I think of prescription bottles still on the bathroom vanity. How can human beings live with such contrasting emotions? How can we be relieved to have “made it” when so many have not? I spoke with a friend of mine this last week, and she was telling me how her sibling is in the hospital on a ventilator. You would think telling people ‘sorry for your loss’ or ‘sorry your partner/parent/sibling/friend is in the ICU’ would get easier with the sheer loss people have faced, but it does not. The loss never leaves those surrounding them, for they are left with the coffee cups, shoes, books, dirty laundry… the absence of a soul. My heart aches for our walk of life, and I do not know how we will ever return to the “before.” I do not believe society will ever return to who we were before March of 2020.

 I think back to the “early days” of the pandemic, and how I was so exhausted from graduate school auditions, work, and school. I met the beginning of the shutdown with naïveté and trusted that the systems put in place would protect us from the eventual 548,000+ deaths in our country. I spent several days in late March listening to Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem while sitting in the low afternoon glow flooding my apartment bedroom. If you are not familiar, it is a forty-minute setting of the Latin mass to the most hauntingly transcendent music I have ever heard. The music’s journey is somewhat consistent with the mass’ structure. The rites, the blessings, the prayers, etc… It ends, however, with a short meditation titled In Paradisum. It reads, “Into Paradise may the angels lead you, may the martyrs welcome you in your coming and guide you into the holy city Jerusalem.” May the souls of our loved ones find peace and solace in wherever we find ourselves after we are no longer walking this earth, and may we find peace and comfort in knowing that their suffering has ended. May we remember the joy they brought us on our worst days. May we remember the hope they brought us when we did not believe in ourselves. May we remember their smile and the sound of their laugh when we feel helpless and sad. Our memory of them is what shall help govern us as we venture into the future.