A COVID Christmas

As we approach what promises to be a dark and sad winter, I am reminded of another Christmas tarnished by personal grief. On December 4, 2012, my dad died of lung cancer, after a two-year struggle. I was in my first year of a PhD program, and on the day he died, I gave a presentation about French historical geography. I was in a daze; I don’t remember anything about it except the looks of pity and bewilderment from my classmates.

As the semester wrapped up, my classmates shared their relief about finishing the term and their excitement about going home for the holiday break. By contrast, I found Christmastime emotionally disorienting. The sparkly lights lining the streets. The cheery Christmas classics on the radio in every store. The general sense of excitement and anticipation in the air. It all felt like a slap in the face, like the world was taunting me with green and red holiday paraphernalia, admonishing me to be happy because, after all, “it’s the most wonderful time of the year!” But for me, that Christmas was full of grief and loss. I didn’t know what to do when faced with my dad’s empty recliner, where he used to sit when we debated politics or laughed together. I felt like my home — the home filled with laughter and memories of the four of us — had disappeared forever. And I felt bitterly jealous of the jubilant, festive people who were celebrating winter holidays with their families. Logically, I knew that many of them might have lost someone before, and that the outward image of happiness can hide a lot of things. But it felt like I was all alone in a bubble of sadness, as everyone else threw their joy in my face.

This week, eight years later, I called my mom and told her to cancel her trip to visit us in New York, which we had cautiously (but foolishly) booked so that she could quarantine and then spend Christmas with her 6-month-old grandson. The decision to cancel came after weeks of behind-the-scenes handwringing and sobbing and arguments with my husband, and daily deep dives into any and all news articles about COVID-19 spikes. I obsessively Googled “COVID travel Christmas,” in hopes that I’d miraculously come across an article recommending air travel, telling us that things could be normal, or reassuring me about my profound desire for at least part of my family to be together for the holidays. The best I could find were articles that expressed ambivalence or offered safety precautions with an air of resignation. In the depths of this magical thinking, I hoped that maybe Dr. Fauci suddenly wouldn’t be talking about a “surge upon a surge” anymore. Maybe all those people who travelled for Thanksgiving wouldn’t actually get sick. Maybe cases would decline, or at least level off. But this was about as logical as hoping years ago that my dad would once again be sitting in his recliner next to the fireplace, simply because I desperately wanted him to be.

There are many things we want in life, sometimes so deeply that it physically pains us to imagine otherwise. The want makes our stomachs turn. It makes us scream and sob. It makes us ask what we did to deserve this unfairness. And sometimes, it makes us rage against those who have what we want (or so we think), and against the people or the circumstances that have failed us. That is all part of grief.

So this year, I will once again be grieving — this time, for the images I had in my head of what my son’s first Christmas might look like. I imagined him spending Christmas Eve with my grandparents, my mom and sister, and my uncle’s family, watching in awe as the older kids laughed and opened their presents. Selfishly, I thought having my own family to celebrate Christmas Day with would be restorative for me, bringing back some of the holiday spirit I lost along with my dad. When it became clear that we wouldn’t be traveling back to the Northwest, my brain generated a new, second-rate but still lovely image: my mom (and possibly my sister) would be with us in New York, doting on my son and sharing in his adorable belly laughs. We would sit in the living room, basking in the light from the Christmas tree. We would bake sugar cookies, carrying on one of our favorite family traditions.

I wanted all of these things, and I felt entitled to them. I knew other people were traveling to see their families. I knew that millions of Americans had already gone against the recommendations and pleas of doctors, nurses, and the CDC to stay home and not travel for Thanksgiving. Who were these people to have what I wanted? If they could see their families, why couldn’t I see mine? I had been wearing a mask, following rules, and staying inside since March. I hadn’t been able to share my son with the world, as I had been looking forward to ever since I got pregnant. It wasn’t fair, and I deserved to spend holidays with my family, just like “everyone else.” (My husband is quick to remind me that the people I perceive to be “everyone else” are in fact only a small percentage of the population.) Our leaders failed us, and some of our fellow Americans disappointed us. Yet even well-justified anger, fatigue, and frustration do not add up to a compelling or logical reason. I wanted to see my family, and I felt it wasn’t “fair” that I couldn’t. But in reality, I didn’t “deserve” any of these things, just as I didn’t “deserve” to have my dad live longer than he did.

Sometimes things happen that are beyond our control, and they throw what we want and what we imagined out the window. In coping with the pandemic’s upending of our lives, people have tried to take back control over the few aspects that they can: mask-wearing, traveling, socializing. And we do have a choice in this. To whatever degree my choice has an impact, I would rather grieve the Christmas I had imagined than experience (or unwittingly cause others to experience) that other, deeper grief over which we have no control at all. Already, hundreds of thousands of families will be spending this Christmas mourning loved ones lost to the virus, wondering how to cope with the oppressive emptiness left behind. In a few more months, we will hopefully have an effective vaccine for COVID-19, and our regrets over what we may have missed out on this year will be a distant memory; for those grieving the passing of family members and friends, the timeline is much less linear and the process of healing much less complete.

This year, individual loss and sadness are bound up with a more collective, shared grief that could unite us in sentiment and in action, if we allow it to. We can try to spare ourselves and each other more suffering, by making a choice that is unfair, and difficult, and awful, but is nevertheless the only “right” and humane one: to stay home.