death – The Great Adjustment

Raging Around the Indian Ocean

In the waiting area for the tiny plane to the private island, i’m slugging from the Grey Goose bottle i just panic-bought in the overpriced duty-free shop, upon landing. All around me, people are joyful; i remain remotely rigid. Smiling into the neck of the bottle, i thought of the beaming, young Qatari women who wished me a great stay. One of the pair had been here before. She motioned to her partner – “It’s her first time. You’re really in for a treat.” Once the big plane had landed, they shed their abayas, their aloof demeanors, and the burden of hiding their love. Habibti.

Our plane was late. Or in need of repair. “That was supposed to be your plane.” The manager showed me the mechanic working in the little hanger. “We are waiting for two more passengers. If they make it, we’ll be over our weight limit, so each couple will leave one bag behind.” Huh. Why had we packed so sparingly – so very irritatingly mathematically, weighing and re-weighing our small duffels, only to be displaced by some tardy honeymooners? I went back into the lounge and took another pull of the vodka, not really bothering to hide it anymore.

Years spent in the oft-touted-wealthiest-country-in-the-world can make a girl brazenly entitled. It had been four years of seemingly-limitless abuse and struggle in a furnace of nation and now our first break since surviving an impossible project. Entitlement and her sister, Disdain, almost always roll downhill. As a middleman, i had reliably superior aim, and, for my husbands happiness, i am a lioness. My dad had just died. I hadn’t saved him nor given him all the experiences he had still had a taste for — and i’d be damned if anything was going to get in the way of giving the man i had left everything he deserved.

My finely-tuned InshAllah seemed enfeebled by a fleeting and baseless sense of influence over the course of life’s events. When one’s relation to life loses the slipperiness of accepting everything, the resulting friction can be nearly lethal. With this hot antagonism, i greeted the holiday.

Death is near

During a psychedelic moment in Amsterdam, a friend once mirthfully said to me, “Death is near… but not near me.” We were seated, giggling, at an outdoor cafe. I didn’t see Death, but our squad took his word for it.

When death is near, things tend to get profound

When death is near, things tend to get profound – and at times – darkly amusing. Our brains, between waves of panic, find pools of calm where we make connections on kaleidoscopic levels.

My Uncle Frank ( an incredible teacher, coach, family patriarch and documentarian); Kate (my dear friend, fashion entrepreneur and activist, mother of two darling young girls); Little Richard (my first cognizant toddling memory of a tv image). These are just a few who passed away in the recent days of the shitdown, each warranting proper memorializing. We kind of barely spoke of it. It’s untenable when death is so near and we have lost the luxury of mourning losses per our pre-Covid conventions. Our brains and hearts can’t metabolize so much collective and personal loss and trauma all at once. Bodies are piling up in unusual places and services with tears-in-physical-proximity-to-loved-ones are verboten.

Kate Kruger (December 29, 1973 – April 11, 2020) with her girls.

Uncle Frank Greco, family historian. (February 1, 1932 – March 18, 2020)

The legendary Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020)

Zooming with my Foxhole girls, B said it best. The data is fierce, said B, we are NOT every man for himself. At the same time, we are finding ways to be more self-reliant.

The thought of my absence from my father’s side as he went through chemoradiation would have been unimaginable before The Great Adjustment. He sent a photo of what he calls his Hannibal Lector disguise, the bespoke computer-designed thermoplastic mask that held his head to the table during treatment these past few weeks.

Masks give us quite a lot to unpack, both as a symbol and a tool.

I mean masks give us quite a lot to unpack – both as a symbol and now as a tool. Maybe that’s why masking is so provocative and charged. Images of face coverings stir us emotionally and culturally with ramifications that may be both practical and archetypal.

Where are we on a spectrum, where what was once disturbing and uncomfortable, becomes a lifeline to survival?