For most, COVID crystallized in our minds when Tom Hanks tested positive one year ago. That news resonated rapidly, he being a familiar guest in our living rooms for years, whereas the universal decrees that the NHL and NBA were shutting down, albeit unforeseen, were comparably anonymous.
Singer-songwriter, John Prine, succumbed to the virus shortly thereafter, and although not attributed to COVID, the coincident closing of the curtain on Sean Connery, in spite of his nine-times-nine-lives benefit, as Bond, stung too. Likewise, it did for Kirk Douglas, he of Gunfight at the OK Corral fame, where his ability to be a ‘good guy’ while playing a ‘bad guy’, made him the best guy.
Sadly, as well, the passing of a litany of former great ballplayers, a virtual cascade of the early-1970s Street & Smith’s baseball magazine covers; among them, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan, and Hank Aaron. Other sports, too, have not gone unscathed; consider the NFL’s Don Shula; Boxing’s Leon Spinks and Marvin Hagler; let alone the last of the NHL’s three Plagers, Bob.
And, with such news, long spells of dismay – a COVID-fog, some say – before the reality of chronology’s contest with physiology comes into play. Surely, the demise of Joe DiMaggio, Roberto Clemente and Jean Beliveau, saddened sports fans of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, in the same way?
However blurred, it seems human nature to connect such losses to a puzzling pandemic, the understanding of which is occurring on the fly.
Such confusion coupled to an ever-more-negative news cycle, makes for a nagging angst that nefariously nudges too many to despair. It conjures memories of 9-11’s dark days, when, in the echo of its destruction and debris, Mr. Dressup passed away.
Whether to the virus or not, a difficult matter, this darkness and death. Were Alex Trebek still amongst us, he’d convey what I can’t, in half this space.
What’s certain for sure, is a longing for better days, like those depicted so warmly in that melancholic artwork, with those ghost-like images in old-fashioned settings. You know, those pastels one invariably encounters in secondhand shops on any town’s main street.
Typically, there’s an elder gent in plaid and suspenders, fishing with grandkids off a weathered wooden dock on some tranquil lake. An old dog’s always nearby, as is a Fargo pick-up in some overgrown field.
Bygone eras, when our best sides were better; not always, but more often. A time when breathless kids, with rosy cheeks were called in from outside, rather than called out from inside, tucking their phones away.
Imagine … some long ago Ward Cleaver guiding a young boy through an alphabet of Aaron, Beliveau, Clemente and DiMaggio; then, too, through the values and etiquette of this same crew.
Our church gathered recently to memorialize 16 members, among them my dear friend Joan, an August ’31 like Beliveau, with a hint of Douglas’s gravel in her voice.
While the pandemic prevented a proper proceeding, how comforting the solace and solemnity of sunny Sunday mornings in Westmount-like places, with Westmount-like people, remembering aged parishioners singing hymns in their failing voices from their preferred pews.
It’s absence that we mourn, not loss, though there’s sadness for sure. In time, memories of gladness overcome sadness, though both are meaningful to melancholy’s magical mix.
Further still, couple this to the return of spring and the optimism of new life enveloped in it, regardless of a persistent pandemic. It’s all the more reason to marvel at yellow, mid-March daffodils, and wildlife emerging and wildlife returning – grand, green-headed mallards with mates.
This circadian course of the earth, beyond our grasp conceptually, though not entirely. It’s Genesis to me, with ample room for some science, and Gaia, too, is welcome in a way, as Ecclesiastes 1:7 does say:
“All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.”
Some time ago, on one of those sunny Sundays, Joan took my arm as we strolled leisurely through the parking lot to her car. A light breeze whispered through her cotton-like hair as she asked me softly if I’d say a few words for her when she passed away.
And, while I’ve tried here to do so, I turn it over to her …
“Say hey … did you hear? Willie Mays is gonna be 90, just like you and me.”
“I’m off to Groome Lake … skippin’ stones off the dock with Grampa, just down the laneway, past the farmhouse by that nifty pick-up where the dogs play. And, that cool blue stream … runnin’ faster than ever … water the horses there every day, and Gramma’s garden too … her parsley and sage, and the rosemary and thyme.”
“Happy Easter … see ya Sunday.”
You bet.
John Epstein is a former, 25-year Orillia business owner who left southern Ontario for the north years ago, and has never been back. He is now a freelance writer, whose column will appear monthly in MidlandToday.
