Everything Breaks

First the watch stopped keeping time. 

You ordered a new one but it wasn't a priority item, so it would take over a month to ship. Time didn't seem to matter most days anyway so you just got used to never knowing the hour or even the day.

Then it was the "n" on the keyboard. It just stopped working. Funny how often you use the letter “n”. But the Apple store was closed so what could you do. The laptop seemed almost useless now. 

"You don't know what you got till it's gone," played in your head.

Then the dishwasher stopped on one cycle, re-setting itself when it got down to "0". Then it just stopped altogether. Finally your husband reached the helpful local appliance guy over the phone. He said the machine wasn't worth fixing. You needed to buy a new one. He said they were easy to install by yourself but you knew you couldn't. So you started washing the dishes by hand. It was weirdly satisfying, your hands in the hot water, the grease and food residue disappearing in the suds. Like you were cleansing more than the plates and bowls. Something you could DO. Something tangible and familiar in the face of so many unknowns. 

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine” was your soundtrack those days.

You had to cancel your trip to meet your daughter and son-in-law. Would you get a refund? Right now, that seemed like the least of your worries. You just wanted to be safe. You wanted your family to be safe. Even if it meant you couldn’t see them.  

Morrisey’s “I Will See You in Far-Off Places” kept running through your head.

Things started running out in the stores. Toilet paper. Hand sanitizer. Flour. Yeast. Eggs. Beans. Pasta.  Things you couldn't predict. The outbreaks at meat packing plants caused shutdowns in production. And there was no accounting for what people were hoarding. It was like people were going back to their pioneer roots but without being self-sufficient and suddenly you realized how not self-sufficient you really were. How dependent you were on people you don’t even know just to get through every day. 

The internet was slow. Other times it was the cell service- your life-lines with the world.

People all around out of work, living off savings and credit cards and loans and government promises. First it was no one you knew, and then it was.

And still the COVID-19 numbers were moving up and up. First creeping and then ballooning and there was nothing to do but watch and wait and hope. Hope that people would follow the instructions. That there would be a vaccine. That science would win before someone you knew died. You avoided the elderly and your own family and friends and for a long time, it was no one you knew who got sick. And then it was. 

Nat King Cole’s “Smile” was your theme song. Because you tried to smile, even though it felt like everything was breaking, including your heart.

You prayed those tax dollars would hold up and that single payer public health care system you believed in would be enough to save you. That the "economy" would hold. That property values wouldn’t collapse. That decades of savings would not be wiped out. That already high rates of inequality wouldn’t lead to greater disparity. In your heart, you knew that wasn’t true.

Flatten the curve, you were told. Social isolation. Herd immunity. Physical distancing. The r-factor. New terms you tried to learn. New rules you tried to follow, counter intuitive as they seemed. Science you tried to understand. 

The one thing you did understand was the fear.  Fear that someone you loved would fall ill and there would be nothing you could do to help. That they would die alone and all you could do was weep. Fear for yourself. Fear for those with mental illness. Fear your country would be the next Italy. 

In the middle of it, conspiracy theories. That China deliberately planted the virus to dominate the global economy. That your government was trying to screw you over. That your rights were being stripped away. People wanted someone to blame. They wanted to be angry. Because anger somehow felt more productive than fear.

You watched the news from south of the border. Lineups for food banks. The homeless sleeping in parking lots. Armed people on the steps of the legislature, demanding their “freedoms”. Demanding an end to the lockdown so they could get their hair cut and walk on the beach, regardless of who they infected, including themselves. “Give me liberty or give me death,” they said and where would that end? Then the news that the sale of guns and ammo was at an all-time high. You were afraid there would be some kind of anarchy. A fear that had you wishing you had been in that line up for a gun at Cabela’s before it got shut down. Fear you would be the next U.S.

Fred Eaglesmith’s “Time to Get a Gun” started playing in your head.