Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 8

I awaken to another bright blue sky. It seems impossible that the sky could be bluer than yesterday, but it is.

Over coffee I get a text from a friend in Liverpool. She hasn’t hunkered down yet. Instead, she’s been driving up and down the country helping other people. She’s moved her god-daughter, a student, out of London. She can’t go back to her parents because her dad’s in a vulnerable group, so for now she’s going to live at my friend’s.

I know her flat. I’ve stayed there. She’ll be sleeping on an air mattress on the floor in their front room.

My friend’s also been to Manchester to buy essentials for her elderly father who just lost his wife In November. He’ll be alone now for God knows how long.

I used to worry that in the case of an apocalypse and if coffee were no longer available, I might be forced to give it up. I used to joke that I think I’d rather die than give up coffee. My way of covering up my fear that there may actually come a time when I can’t have coffee.

Now that the apocalypse has come I don’t give a shit about coffee. I’m enjoying it and if I couldn’t have anymore it wouldn’t matter. The suffering of no longer having coffee is nothing compared to what’s actually going on.

I feel ashamed by my previous crassness. I set an intention to be less crass in the future.

I can hear my downstairs neighbour playing hide and seek with her young son in the back garden. Bubbles keep blowing past the window. I keep hearing her son yell, “For God’s sake!” and wonder who he’s picked that up from. No one corrects him.

I get up to pee and notice a new toilet roll on the dispenser, still stuck together and waiting to be ripped apart. I remember replacing it in the middle of the night. I have a moment of gratitude for the me who was lucid enough to do that at 3am. And gratitude that we’ve still got toilet roll.

This small moment of gratitude leads to another. I’m grateful for the previous version of me who decided to learn how to meditate. For the me who thought it might be a good idea to work on cultivating patience. I feel gratitude for the version of me who decided to learn how to love herself, and others, more fully.

I feel gratitude. A welcome antidote to guilt.

Back in bed and still nursing my coffee, I remember my dream. It comes flooding back with a sudden heaviness that almost takes my breath away. My mother, who died of breast cancer 28 years ago, is slipping out the back door of the family home. I just catch a glimpse of her before she’s gone.

I feel torn between following her and continuing to carry on with whatever it is I am doing. I don’t know what I’m doing, but clearly its more important than following my mother out the back door.

I used to romanticize her death. I’d tell myself she got out easy. That it’s better to die young, fit and beautiful. It’s better to be remembered at the top of your game, then suffer a long, slow decline. She dodged the indignity of an old person’s death. But since getting diagnosed with breast cancer myself last July, I don’t do that anymore. No, it’s better to live. For as long as I can, it’s better to live.

My cancer was caught early. After surgery in September and a month of radiotherapy, I’m in the clear. My genetic test has just come back negative. No gene mutations. My chances of getting breast cancer again are the same as the general population. More gratitude.

I check the news. The US government has pushed the tax deadline back three months. I have to laugh at that. During an apocalypse, you can’t even be certain about taxes. I guess that only leaves one thing we can be certain about.

In the afternoon, I’m on a group call with friends. One of us is all zoomed out. But she’s still on the call. More gratitude.

We go for our daily walk, a quick lap around Hackney Downs before I’m scheduled to lead meditation online. We go around the park in the opposite direction from the other day. We see people playing basketball and tennis. I hope they’ve washed their hands. We a man with a bicycle and a woman with a shopping bag having a conversation, standing casually 2 metres apart. More gratitude.

After dinner I check my email. Trainline is now offering a refund for my advanced single return tickets to Manchester. I fill out the online form. They’ll get back to me in 28 days. More gratitude.

Now Boris the Clown is sat alone at a desk, a stark contrast to the last few days when he’d been stood at a podium flanked by advisors and experts. I feel like I’m about to get a talking to from the school principal.

And that’s exactly what happens. Unfortunately, since we failed the social distancing test, this is what now must be done. We have been instructed to stay home for the next three weeks. To be reviewed then. We can go to the park for exercise once a day. We can buy food and medicine when necessary.

I should have ordered take-away pizza for dinner tonight.

Before bed I Facetime with my sister. It’s snowing heavily outside and my 13 year old niece has taken to wearing her roller skates around the house. She can even do stairs.

My sister tells me that their nursing students are being trained to watch each other put on and take off their protective gear to check for mistakes that could lead to contamination. They are literally being trained for 10 mins before being put to work in a real, live situation. They are getting it wrong. She has to correct them over and over.

My sister tells me that once a patient needs more than 6 litres of oxygen they have to be intubated. She tells me that some people in their 40s and 50s go from upright and talking to unconscious in a matter of hours. She doesn’t know if they have underlying health conditions.

She tells me the hospital has set up a completely new ICU just for CV patients, but besides beds there’s nothing there, no gear, no medicines, no machines. She and a colleague take the initiative to stock the unit with everything they need.

We cook up a plan to host a family cocktail hour on Zoom. I’ll send out the link for Friday night. It will be 10pm our time, 6pm theirs. It will include all my siblings, partners, children and the parents. We have to time it right, so people are already tipsy before we get on the call.

We don’t know how it will work because we are used to talking over each other. I imagine my family trying to go around in a circle and “check-in”, like we do with our Buddhist friends. I fall asleep with a smile on my face. More gratitude.