Reflections on the season
At the approach of the season’s festivities, the Pandemic appears to be dissipating and we are reminded that people live complicated lives that don’t always conform to the beliefs and expectations of others. Yet we must be inspired by the silver lining of the support and service that emerged, such as hand-sewn masks, cooked meals, vital stores remaining open, first responders responding, neighbors caring for neighbors (and for their neighbors’ animals!), and healthcare workers (especially nurses!) working to beyond exhaustion under the most heart-breaking circumstances.
The virus passes from person to person, and often between loved ones, and we continue to live in fear of when a loving gesture may unwittingly transfer the virus.
W.B. Yeats in The Second Coming captured a sense of the world spinning out of control during the Spanish flu pandemic and describes the fear and anxiety we suffer while locked in by the virus. “We are closed in, and the key is turned…” T.S. Eliot, who survived influenza, in his poem, The Wasteland, described the “Unreal City,” and wrote, “April is the cruelest month.” April, the time of renewal when the snow melts; the flowers bloom; the seeds are sown, and; the young (and old!) turn to thoughts of love; the beginning of hope. The COVID-19 April brought alarm and grief, empty city streets, hospitals choked with the ill and dying, bodies piled in trucks, and fears of contagion preventing gathering to mourn. For those of us who have weathered this pandemic, it is hard to grasp the sheer magnitude of this virus sweeping around the world and killing millions of people. Not just in personal statistics but real people with real lives. Thomas Wolfe captured it in Look Homeward, Angel, describing the death of his brother, Ben, from the Spanish flu, “We can believe in the nothingness of life, we can believe in the nothingness of death and of life after death—but who can believe in the nothingness of Ben?”
The pandemic will end; April will come again; and, like T.S. Eliot, we will recover. A decade later, he had recovered to the extent that he could write the light-hearted lyrics that became the basis for the musical, Cats.
I am very grateful for your support of my research program and send every good wish for a healthy, happy holiday season and the New Year.
William J. Catalona, MD
