This Demented Life: A Flash Blog

That sameness of days, sunshine the thoughtless tease of an endless summer dream.

Every day is the same, but nothing will ever be the same.

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Quarantine. Lockdown. Shelter-in-Place. Re-entry. Curfew. Scurrying around the pandemic hamster wheel for so long we’re not sure how to act when the cage door opens.

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The world beyond the house: That hour when I meet a friend in a restaurant and the world is almost real again. And then I return to the confines of home. Where nothing ever changes, as if I had never left.

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Living the pandemic is like watching Gilligan’s Island reruns. Every day the same. Gather coconuts. Get on the bike and generate energy. Bicker with your fellows. Ward off the cannibals.

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Evening walk, 7:45 pm. Silent. Streetlights flickering. The soft patter of my flipflops on the sidewalk. The feeling of someone behind me.

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From my daily journal, 5/4/20: March was a lifetime ago.

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“I don’t have many years left, my husband says.” I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the living room.”

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Evening walk, 7:45 pm The elderly man I wave to every night as he walks around the block? He finally waved back. Pink Bermuda shorts.

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The tireless drone of the TV like some cheesy soundtrack from a bad movie. Bad news and the falsity of pharmaceutical ads.

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Lockdown: At first it was intriguing. Now it feels overdone. Burnt. A cake baking too long in the oven.

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Article in news feed:  “Boredom can be caused by a number of factors, but the most common is being stuck in a repetitive or monotonous experience.”

Me: No shit.

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When you realize you’re so bored even all those weird books your dad sends every Christmas, languishing on the dusty bookshelf, start to look good.

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The last time I saw my mother, she was alive.

I feel like this should be the first line of the winning entry in a pandemic essay contest.  

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Who’s to say an unintended consequence of this pandemic will be long-term care residents, unvisited and forgotten, unable to feel the love and touch and energy of loved ones? Who’s to say they don’t just give up and die sooner?

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What if this is all meant to happen? What if this virus takes my mother down its swirling tornado of doom? Dad still fighting it in his endless quest to disprove everything: aging, medicine, his own fragile state, driving, independent living, outliving threat after threat, like Methuselah.

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And now in this pandemic, the bland sameness of days, tedious passage of moments and days and weeks and months where the groundhog sees his shadow day in and day out, the painful lesson of being in the now, just as my mother has lived every day for the past five years. Life measured in moments. The passage of time different here.

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I send my parents care packages and cards as if they were kids away at summer camp. Their delight as satisfying as my own upon receiving letters airmailed from home when I lived abroad.

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After they divorced, both parents lived on separate islands. Now, nestled in their respective care homes, they share opposing views of the Bay. Even if I lived down the street it would still be a world away, lockdown or not, for mom. Even in my childhood she was distant.

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I am faced with the growing possibility of a double funeral. Or maybe triple. Who would plan them if I die? Will anyone be left to attend, virtually or not?

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Pandemic Obituary: A time for remembrance will be found in the future.

Pandemic Memorial: The Celebration of Life service has been postponed until it is safe to congregate again.

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This monochromatic sameness of days. Life feels colorless. Dull.

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I hate this edgy restlessness. The dogs constantly scratching at the door.

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Lack of focus. I’ll be making scrambled eggs, then zone off, thinking about the island, thinking about where I bought my spatula, wondering if Cindy’s okay. Then return to the eggs like, what the fuck am I doing right now? What was I just thinking about again?

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My world is unbalanced, teetering on a one-legged yoga pose.

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The tentative “you okay?” texts to friends I haven’t connected with in months. The random memories that pop into my mind.

“Remember that time we were so hungover I puked in the ficas tree at Denny’s?” I text Cindy.

“Nope,” she responds.

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Run the dogs. Walk the dogs. Walk the neighborhood under the stars. A neighbor smoking a cigar, smoke curling in the moonlight. Someone doing laundry.

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On the kitchen counter, two recipes: Rice Krispy treats and my cousin’s Cape Cod chicken. Comfort food I’ll never make.

Note: I made both.

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I can’t explain why I find Wednesday morning trash pick-up soothing. Because it’s a routine carried over from The Before? Or the marking of midweek gives us a forward push as we move closer to The After? Does it matter?

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Dreamy sunshine. The thoughtless tease of an endless summer.

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At what exact moment did showering become a major life event?

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The pandemic: An entire season of snowdays. With power.

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None of this makes sense. “They opened the beach at Coronado yesterday, but no boating allowed,” my husband reports. “I don’t get it.

Bartlett Lake allowing boats, but no swimming.

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Nothing makes sense and nothing makes sense.