It was roughly one year ago that the country was deep into a lockdown, and the dimensions of Covid-19 became apparent to me.

I knew our world was about to change; I knew my life was about to change.

I see and feel better days ahead; I already see calming and healing signs. The politicians will do their thing; the people will do their thing.

I am eager to return to a full and meaningful life, which is a joyous thing to me.

I wanted to take a few minutes to think and write about what I miss about pre-pandemic life and what it revealed to me.

Millions of people have suffered more than I did and lost much more than I lost. But we suffered too, of course, as did everyone reading this.

I am also thinking about whether the pandemic has changed me.

The things I lost were personal, temporal, and mostly cultural.

I did not get sick.

Many of my friends did, especially those in New York and other cities. Five or six died. I often hear people in my town ask one another contemptuously and skeptically if they know anyone who actually died.

This constant rumble that masks are an attack on freedom and the pandemic itself a hoax. Somehow, science, something we were taught to revere,  has fallen into disrepute.

Of course, many people died – at least a half million.

This cold talk of hoaxes – widespread in America today -hurts me in a personal way when I hear it. Oh yes, I say, a lot of people have died. But I only say that to myself.

I don’t argue my views with strangers.

On a higher level than me, the pandemic laid bare the country’s worst and ugliest political and social divisions.

At first, all of us – even the then President – were mesmerized by Covid-19 and how it threatened to overwhelm our hospital and public health system. I remember those awful briefings.

The chance to come together as one great community crumbled under the weight of immoral leaders, argument, lies, fear, and suffering.

Speaking of briefings, Andrew Cuomo started the pandemic as a hero and truth-teller, but he got too close to the sun, as heroes in America tend to do. He fell from hero to goat.

If he were a Trumpist, he could tough it out with lies. But it doesn’t work that way in the real world, and it shouldn’t.

That’s sad.  He did a great job. He helped me greatly to understand the pandemic and my responsibilities in dealing with it.

I am not sure why Donald Trump’s deadly and even horrifying indifference to the pandemic  – I wonder how many lives he cost – is brushed off by his many supporters and Cuomo’s very real dishonesty regarding the deaths in New York nursing homes matters so much, and rightly so.

If one is a scandal, isn’t the other?   

I miss the idea of truth and accountability.  We used to agree that lying was wrong. We seem to be forgetting what truth and wrong are. That saddens me.

Once it became clear that the pandemic was mostly striking down older people and minorities, and immigrants, the white polis that has dominated our country for many years seemed to turn away from it and dismiss it as a political or media hysteria.

Scientists say tens of thousands of helpless people died hard because of that.

The rich got only richer, and this became just another chapter in the oldest story in the world – the rich screwing the poor and getting rich off of their sweat and blood.

There are a lot worse things than socialism.

The contempt for science and suffering fit perfectly into a country bitterly divided – the white working-class versus the new America.

We have become a selfish country; we worry only about ourselves. We take responsibility for nothing.

Along with insurrection, ignoring disease and moral responsibility suddenly became patriotic, a defense of the Constitution.

This all fit perfectly into our then President’s agenda – the truth is lies and lies are truth The pandemic became just another poisonous political opportunity for the left and the right to tear at one another, just like the Texas power catastrophe already is.

I miss the truth.

I was sorry to see so many Christians defile the meaning of Christ for money and political power. Just when we needed his message the most, many abandoned it.

Joe Biden seems to be getting a handle on the pandemic, day by day, step by step, and I can’t help but being hopeful about that, not only for the obvious reasons but because the pandemic ended up playing to neatly into President Trump’s mad genius for cynicism, division, and indifference to human suffering.

The easiest license to obtain in America was a license to hate, lie and ignore the needy.

The pandemic made many people ill, but it made the whole country sick in the soul.

For me, it upended my life in benign, sad, and challenging ways. I couldn’t go to Bishop Maginn High School with Zinnia after March. My friendships with these amazing refugee children survived but more weakly and indirectly.

I haven’t been allowed into the Mansion since last March. I’ve been able to help Bishop Maginn and the Mansion thanks to the Army Of Good, which stayed on mission.

We have been creative. We learned to help from a distance. We did help, and we are helping – every day.

I miss reading to the residents, hearing their stories, asking them what they need, checking out their tattered shoes and thin blankets; I miss our meditation classes and hearing them tell their stories. We miss our bingo games, and Maria misses her art classes.

I miss them struggling so painfully and valiantly with life on the very edge of life. I miss saying goodbye when they leave or die.

I miss going to the movies a lot. I love movies and movie theaters and theater popcorn.

I watched in sympathy as so many women – especially mothers – bore the brunt of so much disruption and responsibility. I can’t remember when it was easy to be a woman; I’m sure it never was. This past year was tough.

Watching movies at home is not the same. Tonight we watched several old Three Stooges movies, but they were not funny.

I get lonely sometimes, I don’t have many friends, but I am a social creature, and I like to talk to people.

In many ways, the pandemic is about staying away from people, especially if you have two chronic illnesses and are over 70 years old.

I’ve been warned a dozen times not to let my guard down, as it could be fatal. That realization has been harder for Maria than for me.

Masks offer a different perspective when not wearing one could kill people like me. I don’t wish to kill anyone else or make them sick.

I still arrange Mansion lunches from Jean’s Place, but I can’t go to the restaurant to eat anymore; when I pick up food, I still do; I come in masked, pay quickly leave. I miss it. Kelsie left, but we never got to say goodbye.

I had two or three people I talked with regularly on the phone and appreciated that but those friendships didn’t seem to hold up under pandemic rules – Zooming, Facetime, social distanced walks in the woods.

Maria responded more easily to the pandemic than I did.

She has made some wonderful friends, and their friendships have deepened and grown and flowered. They always find ways to talk to one another.

I can’t truthfully say mine have. I did try.

I have always been alone for much of my life; in some ways, it is the most comfortable space for me. I get lonely at times, but I never feel loneliness. There is so much happening in my life.

My love and commitment to the blog have deepened. I love writing more than ever.

I am at a good pace after the pandemic year. I have never loved my life more or felt better about the meaning of that. The pandemic is a teacher. Love thy neighbor is much more than a commandment.

I am getting comfortable with myself and accepting of my life.

People are home more and have time to read. I have much more time to read.  And time to write.

I got more than a million and a half new readers on the blog during the pandemic year. It looks like almost all of them are hanging around. That is pretty cool.

My love for and from Maria has deepened; I think I might have gone a little mad if not for Maria; my heart jumps every single time I see her.

We have only grown closer and more appreciative of our love together.

We support one another in every possible way. That makes all the difference.

Tomorrow we are sending in the forms that begin our becoming Animal Wildlife Rehabilitators; the process will take a couple of months. We are excited about this new chapter in our lives. I will write about it, believe me.

Maria’s art has never been richer, deeper, or more beautiful. All this death and suffering and conflict opens a creative person up.

I miss long dinners with interesting people.

I miss walking in town with my dog. I miss browsing in a book store instead of ordering books on the phone and picking them up in a basket on the street.

In Zinnia, I have the sweet and easy companion I wanted, she is the right dog for me now, and I love her dearly.

I very much miss going out to restaurants, this was something Maria and I did three or four times a week, and love to do at the end of a workday at home.

We both miss going to events where there are other people – restaurants, concerts, museums, cities.

My love for nature and animals has increased sharply.

We just ordered two new chickens this morning. The less life there is around us, the more life there is on the farm.

How lucky I am to be living on a farm during this pandemic. So much teeming and real-life all around me every time I step outside.

On March 11, I get my first vaccine shot, the beginning of the first liberation phase.

I took advantage of the pandemic to address my body and health: two very successful heart procedures and one very successful prostate procedure.

One was serious; two were optional. I am healthier and more comfortable than before.

Oddly, I came through all of these procedures well; it slid down an icy hill in my new car that almost did me the worst harm. But it was all right.

I have an alternative view of life’s challenges. Obstacles and crises are an opportunity to connect to the light; they let the light in.

I believe the light is coming, to my country, to my life, to my farm.  The Kabbalah says the light comes only from God.

I can’t promise it, but I feel it coming. Faith, to me, believes that tomorrow can be better than today.

Today was better than yesterday. Friday was better than Thursday.