The Duration, day 35. Confined to the house, except for walking the dog, near-daily runs and Andi’s few trips to Plum Market. Feeling incredibly lucky to be confined with my favorite and best companion, to have jobs that allow us to work from our comfortable home and not a single immediate family member or friend affected by the disease, at least not yet. A routine has settled over the weekdays that under any other circumstance might be just how I’d always wanted to live: days working in the study, evening dinners together and a walk outdoors with the puppy afterwards. But I also feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines, wondering when and how to help, paralyzed by a sense that the worst hasn’t even yet begun. A poem in the April 4 Sunday New York Times Magazine called How to Survive This by Barbara Kingsolver sums it up:
O misery. Imperfect
universe of days stretched out
ahead, the string of pearls and drops of venom on the web,
losses of heart, of life
and limb, news of the worst:
Remind me again
the day will come
when I look back amazed
at the waste of sorry salt
when I had no more than this
to cry about.
Now I lay me down.
I’m not there yet.
Chris Bell's Journalismo 