Goodbye 2020

 

This year of momentous discontent is nearly over. As the calendar closes out its final week, hope for a better time animates this strange holiday season. This is my first (and only) blog of 2020. So much has been written about the virus and presidential politics lately that I’ve held back from joining the various choruses singing, in Stephen Stills’ words, “Hooray for our side.”

 My last blogs were about my battles with cancer. I am happy to report that my health is stable, so far, so good. A few months ago, I wrote a story about mourning for my mother who died in March. Though not listed as a Covid death, the circumstances of her passing suggest the novel corona virus played a role. She was 97 and died in her sleep in a nursing home in Queens. She led a good life. We will forever regret that in those early days of the Covid pandemic, we could not be there for her in person. Her Zoomed funeral was the first of several we attended in 2020.

 

The many troubling aspects of this year continue to hang over us globally, nationally, and locally. Most disheartening has been the assault on truth, the willingness of so many to embrace and promote malign lies. Most notable among those lies is that Biden really lost the election, that his victory is based on fraud. “Seditious falsehood” is how the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania described those claims in response to a frivolous and failed—but very dangerous—attempt by Trump, et. al., to have the Supreme Court overturn the will of voters. 

 

The deadly consequences of big lies continue. The repeated falsehoods about how the corona virus would just disappear and is no worse than the seasonal flu led to dangerous behavior. Now vaccines are being rolled out with great anticipation. In the next few months we will be able to resume some of the life we put on hold back in March. But too many are still dying. And so many are hurting. From lost businesses to hunger and spreading food insecurity, the devastating effects of this plague linger.

 

On the cover page of this week’s New York Times Sunday Review: “Vaccines are coming. Trump is going. Sometime in 2021, life will look more normal. But it won’t be the same.” Reading that line, I thought of the changes that followed 9-11-01. Eventually normality resumed, but it’s not the same.

 

For some of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows, past experience is encouraging. We will get through this as we have gotten through previous tragedies and uncertainty. This winter begins with discontent and trepidation but also glimmers of hope. So much will happen in the next few weeks. More people will get vaccinated. The US government will undergo the quadrennial ritual of inaugurating a new president, a very different man coming in to replace the one on his way out. The conflicts and competing interests around the world will not disappear. We will learn to navigate the new normal.

 

Much has changed in the last year. But leadership matters and can make a difference. At every level, I look forward to fresh thinking and a more compassionate approach to managing our current moment and beyond. One day, we will be able to leave our “bubbles” and move from Zoom meetings to being all together in the same room, theater, stadium or sacred spaces. Then we can look back at now and understand just how resilient we have been. All good wishes for 2021.