Thoughts on Passover, Easter, Postponements and a Pandemic

It is Passover. It is Holy Week.   We are quarantined in our homes. Life as we knew it has come to a screeching halt. Everything has changed and no one can reliably predict the future. We have come to a collective pause in our daily lives. There is fear, uncertainty, anxiety, grief, disappointment, disbelief. What we first described as surreal has shifted to a new reality. There is suffering. There is loss.  There is tension. We are stuck.  Sheltered in houses, apartments, rooms, ships, hotels, camps.  We are with family, friends, neighbors, strangers. Or we are alone.  We are changing our behavior. Socially distanced we are FaceTiming and Zooming. Between virtual happy hours we are sanitizing, washing, wiping, scrubbing, singing the alphabet. We are wearing masks and gloves. Our cars sit idol. Our bills are piling up.  We are unsure how the mortgage or the rent will be paid. We are furloughed, laid off, unemployed. We watch CNN, the Cuomo brothers, Netflix. We order groceries online that are dropped at our door by complete strangers - shoppers who text us from the store with reports of empty shelves and no toilet paper. Instacart. Ship't. Amazon. We try to contain our panic. We wipe down our plastic containers and cans. Reusable grocery bags sit unused in our trunks. We mix our Clorox water and spray it on our kitchen counters allowing it to sit for ten minutes to kill the virus. A new way of counting...dwell time.  We are baking bread and creating menus with what we have in the pantry or freezer.
We read the New York Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times and watch the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths climb - hoping that we will see a graph that tells us that we are "flattening the curve" - a phrase that entered our vernacular only weeks ago. We bang pots and pans out windows to celebrate the brave warriors on the front line of this pandemic - doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, grocery store clerks, delivery people. Schools are closed. Teachers are scrambling to instantly convert to online learning platforms. Technology is providing connection and consternation.
High school musicals, sports seasons and the olympics are postponed or canceled. Weddings, funerals, and graduations are on hold.  Broadway is dark. Restaurants and bars are closed.  Parks, paths, beaches  are shut down and guarded. The class of 2020 is watching their senior year evaporate.

It's Passover.

I think about the Frank family. The annex. Anne. Her diary.  Living day in and day out  shut away from the world hoping that things would eventually get back to normal...dependent on the courage and kindness of Miep and others who risked their lives to protect them.

I think about the Warsaw Ghetto, Dachau, Bergen- Belsen, Auschwitz and Terezin where art, music and the human spirit thrived in the midst of  unimaginable horror. I listen to the story of Exodus from the Old Testament. The seven plagues. The poignancy of the re-telling in the midst of a modern plague reminds me that throughout history there has always been suffering, sacrifice and hope for deliverance.

It is Holy week. The holiest season in the liturgical calendar for Catholics. I am reminded that the story does not end in the tomb. There is hope for resurrection, transformation and "new" life.
The ancient rituals and festivals of spring contain the same message of renewal.

 This pandemic will pass.

How this will shape us is left to be seen.  My mother's father died in the 1918 flu. She grew up during the depression, lived through WWII and nursed her son during the AIDS epidemic. She hoarded canned goods, kept her gas tank full and hammered into my head to always take a sweater.  Through her dementia at ninety, she still asked me, "do you need anything?"

Tragedy and suffering need not crush us but as the saying goes, "it's not what happens to you it's how you respond to what happens to you that matters."

Anne hoped for freedom and liberation. I would argue that she had it in the annex despite her circumstances  because she created it. Her diary contains no passages of self-pity for what she was missing out on.
Teenagers today could draw great strength from re-reading The Diary of Anne Frank.

Look to the ancestors. Remember the stories. Draw strength from their fortitude.

 How will this shape us?  Let me rephrase.

Decide to shape this into a story from which our great, great, great grandchildren will draw strength.

It is our turn.

Next year in Jerusalem.

Hope.