By Melissa Walsh
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My “Happy New Year” wish this year has never been more sincere.

As an individual and matriarch and four sons, I’ve experienced difficult years, emotionally and financially. When arriving at the close of those years, I would reach deep and find hope for a better year ahead — for myself and my sons. I felt this sense of combined sadness, relief, and hope acutely for my own family, leaving little room for a healthy empathy for the struggles of friends, acquaintances, and strangers.

In 2020, I grew a much deeper longing for healing for my community, nation, and world. I evolved healthier love. Though my own losses and struggles over the years had cultivated in me an appreciation for relationships, 2020 grew in me a new gratitude for community kinship and desire to always be kind, no matter how tired or inconvenienced I become going through life’s mundane activities. I had thought that my 53 years had already given me enough love for others, but this past year showed me how much more I needed to learn about connecting with community, treating strangers as precious, and loving my family and friends better.

The past year presented humans in the light of vulnerable being. It was important for me to see that vulnerability and study my reaction to it. When staying home became an act to protect others against the physical suffering brought on by this COVID-19 plague and protecting those who love them against grief, I was able to see deep into my heart. I saw a will to do good, but I also saw fear, selfishness, hypocrisy. I saw my own vulnerability and a buried resistance to sacrifice for strangers that I needed to dig up and destroy in order to truth in doing what’s right for promoting the general welfare, not doing what is most consistent with my individual pursuit of happiness and comfort.

The blessings of liberty will not survive in a society plagued by arrogant, selfish, and willfully ignorant citizens who choose to feel threatened by wearing a mask to contain a pandemic. Blessings of liberty thrive only when we view our neighbors and strangers as the most sacred objects of Liberty, exceedingly more dear than our homes, our guns, our church buildings, our comfort.

In his essay "The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis put it this way: "It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. ... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

Amen.

© 2021 Melissa Walsh

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By Melissa Walsh

From my yard where I’m caring for sprouting perennials, I hear the great lake at the end of my street, beckoning me. My dog and I walk to it. We hear it shouting and watch it spitting, reminding us of its power. My dog wants to jump in. I say, “Stay. Leave it.”

The lake is still too cold. I hold onto hope that the sun’s spring strength will warm it soon. We will swim again.

We walk through our still neighborhood like ghosts. The neighborhood “Eye Spy” scavenger hunt theme this week is holidays. We walk past a jack-o-lantern, a grinch, and several easter bunnies.

Occasionally, a neighbor ghost emerges with a friendly, distant greeting, usually directed at my dog, who is renowned in our neighborhood for his athleticism. In summer, neighbors watch his outstanding jumps into the lake to catch a jettisoned stick. They marvel at his endurance as he swims back to shore over the great lake’s waves.​

We will emerge from this pandemic changed in character, like the perennial buds in my yard, but each with a new color as we rise from an environment fertilized with loss and forbearance. Each person’s new color can become an iridescence in a post-pandemic landscape if living in light and receiving water.

Without dismissing real fear and grief, our time in isolation, if we are fortunate to stay healthy, is a remarkable opportunity for self-improvement. It is precious time in the sacred space of solitude — a place of prayerful reflection and listening to what we have always yearned to hear from nature and beyond. It is a place for processing and healing, a battleground where one spins strategies for confronting and defeating inner demons of anxiety, anger, and despair. It is where we set a path in our mind for moving alone into each new day. We nestle with our pets before books and television. We discipline our body with a workout and reward it with a leisurely walk and a good meal.

We seek ways to make company with our own mind. Some dabble in pandemic conspiracy rumors. Others complain on social media about forced solitude. But the strong show gratitude for each new breath and find #StayHome ways to make living more mindful and better.

Those quarantined with family, roommates, or partners find themselves on this battlefield of aloneness with others. No matter what our Stay Home circumstances are, we have this time to chase curiosity and grow knowledge. We can hone skills by practicing our chosen crafts. We can nourish our bodies with exercise and clean eating. We can cultivate richer relationships with family members, and deepen our appreciation for genuine friendship.
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My Stay Home company includes my youngest son, my boyfriend, and my cat and dog. I would love to play chess with my son or boyfriend, a former past time from my youth I haven’t enjoyed in decades. Neither my son nor my boyfriend has ever played chess. With the Stay Home order extended yesterday in Michigan until May 1, this might change.

Wednesday night, I fell asleep crying on my boyfriend’s chest for a woman I knew who lost her life to COVID-19. She died suffering and alone. I knew her as an extroverted “people person.” For her lovely gregariousness, she had been designated our office greeter, a role she excelled in. What were my last words to her? I wondered. Surely, her last words to me had been kind. Hers were always kind words.​

With many others, we also mourn the death of John Prine, the singer/songwriter who taught fans how to be “unlonely.” My boyfriend had tickets for us to see Prine’s upcoming Louisville performance May 22. The cancellation email arrived Thursday.

“During our next road trip, let’s listen only to John Prine songs,” I said.

Of course, there are no trips planned, but we’re keeping the faith that there will be. We sense a new urgency in experiencing more of the world.

I think about my three grown sons whom I haven’t seen in several weeks. I want them to fear the spread of this disease enough to stay home but not to live in fear. My wish is that they’ll be unlonely — that they’ll discover authors and musicians as remote friends, that they’ll spend hours each day immersed in a hobby, and that they’ll learn with the rest of us what we value most in our human relationships. During this time of isolation, I want each to invite his mind to be his friend and to appreciate each new breath.

​​© 2020 Melissa Walsh