The Plague Journal

I got married on the Monday before lockdown.

We wanted to get married in May. We had something beautiful planned. People bought plane tickets, we’d signed contracts, everything was ready to go.  

But then things started getting bad.  This was before the bans on gathering, before social distancing became a mantra. We saw what was coming, though, and we knew we had to make the decision quickly.  We thought about our family and friends, putting themselves at risk to travel. We thought about the people our family and friends would interact with while traveling. We thought about the healthcare workers  who will be on the front lines of this in a few days.  So we delayed our wedding five months and decided to elope. We chose 3/18 and got everything prepared for it.

Except then Monday morning, we found out the courts were closing.

We were DETERMINED to save our right to marry (that we’ve only had for five years) from the maw of the virus. So, with one hour’s notice, two of our friends threw together the most splendid ceremony we could have hoped for. We stood in the front yard of our friends’ house.  Neighbors gathered to watch, standing 6 feet apart in the cul de sac. A little girl we didn’t know threw flowers for us. Someone brought his dog (what’s a wedding without a dog?  Boring.  It’s boring). Someone gave us a bottle of champagne. Someone else brought flowers from her daughter’s baby shower and made us bouquets, while yet another person lent me her grandmother’s pearls because we’d forgotten the ones from my own grandma.  My wife’s best friend stood by her, our hostess stood by me because my family was in other cities and states, and my sister joined on video chat. We got married mere hours before the gathering ban was handed down, and it was incredible.

I love our wedding story. It’s only two weeks old, but god I love our wedding story. In the midst of a pandemic, we got married. In the middle of heinous bigotry, xenophobia, and racism, we got married. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I know who I’ll be with.

As a wedding gift to us, please consider doing a couple of things:

1) Stay home. Flatten the curve. Even when you think that quick trip to the grocery store isn’t a big deal, trust me - it is.  Try going just once a week.  Only take what you need.  Respect senior hours.  Don’t shop at the first of the month, when people on fixed incomes get their checks.

2) We all miss our friends and family right now.  If we don’t visit them now, we will get to visit them later.

3) Find racism and xenophobia and stamp that shit out. If you can afford it right now, intentionally order delivery from Asian-owned restaurants and go to Asian-owned grocery stores. Correct people who call COVID-19 “China flu” or “Wuhan flu.” Protect our Asian community members.

4) Respond with love. Whatever you see, respond with love (and whimsy, if you have any to spare).

- Chloe Deng

It has been a week of refreshing the CDC website on my laptop every time I sit down. It has been a week of bleach solutions and monitoring handwashing and keeping students apart. It has been a week of listening to staff and clients, hearing their concerns and their needs. It has been a week of finding solutions for problems we've never had to consider before. It has been a week of being blown away by the people on my team jumping in to find those solutions.

I took this photo yesterday as we were packing up kits to take home in case a lockdown order came. It wasn't official yet, but we thought it might happen. We stayed late to be sure things were put away. I started the dishwasher even though it was only half full - because nobody wants to come back to moldy coffee cups.

I'm sharing this not because I think my experience is so unique or noteworthy - we all have these moments of unexpected wrenching change and sadness. I'm sharing because I want to remember how I felt in this moment.

When 2020 is a memory and life has gone on (though probably differently), I want to remember what it felt like to sit at my desk and think, "I don't know when I'll sit here again." To feel profound sadness for all of us facing impossible decisions and  uncertainty. To know that my team was doing everything in its power to provide services for our kids. To know that for better or worse, I had done the best I could for the day.

We're all in this together (but 6 feet apart). I'm most grateful to know and be reminded of that. And I'll be even more grateful to be reminded of it next year.

(And yes, I washed my hands and face after I took this photo because I realized I'd touched my face)

- Rachel Libick, 03/21/2020

I locked up my church this week ‘until further notice.’ I didn’t think it was going to be so hard. After all, as a priest I’m regularly reminding people that ‘the church is the people, not the building.’ ‘The church is the servant of the wider community, not an exclusive club with nice premises.’ 

And yet, as I packed up bags full of resources needed to create a makeshift chapel in my home, and to plan and deliver services online, I cried. I cried because the gift of an oasis of open, quiet space amidst frenetic, inner-city London, is no longer something we can offer. I cried because the windowsill in my home office is not where I imagined setting up an altar, and it looks like shit compared to the modernist simplicity of our sanctuary. I cried because I know that I’ll keep going back to church to collect food donations and give them out to the increasing numbers of people impoverished or trapped indoors because of this virus. I cried because, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, this year feels like it is going to be “always Lent, and never Easter.” 

I haven’t cried since then — maybe I just needed to get it out. Maybe it was part of the grieving-and-girding-up process for everything that lies ahead. 

The streets are quiet. The government has urged all who can stay at home to do so, going out only for absolutely essential work, food shopping, one form of daily exercise, or medical necessity. Yesterday I went on a run through the empty city streets and the air was cleaner than I’ve ever seen it here. I gave up running in Central London years ago, moving instead to large city parks or canal towpaths. Yesterday, I ran past the Barbican, St Paul’s Cathedral, Tate Modern, the Globe, and Tower Bridge. I could breathe the air; it was 60 degrees and sunny. I ran a 10k with energy to spare and felt guilty for how much I enjoyed it. I hope that such runs do not become forbidden.

—

On Thursday night, people stepped out of their front doors, or stuck their heads out of windows, and began to applaud, to hoot and holler and blow vuvuzelas and clang pots and pans together. A viral picture had made its way around the internet, an initiative started by a Dutch resident of London, encouraging the nation to ‘clap for the NHS’ [National Health Service] and show appreciation for all those on the front lines of this crisis. The sound was moving, if also troubling; political policies to ensure our health service is…well…healthy are needed, not just goodhearted appreciation. 

I’m getting both better at and weary of Zoom meetings, Zoom prayers, Zoom 1-2-1s, Zoom birthday parties. Tonight, friends from Berlin and I will have a Zoom Kneipe — a pub — where we’ll drink beer and make jokes and talk earnestly in the way that Germans do so well. Tomorrow, Sunday, I will turn on Zoom in the morning to celebrate the eucharist and invite those joining from afar to ‘make an act of spiritual communion’ from home. Tomorrow’s Gospel reading is about Lazarus being raised from the dead. I can’t help but feel like most of us feel we’re shut up in that tomb with him, behind a heavy stone. 

—

I’m worried about my beloved ones in America. 

Mostly, I wish I had a puppy.

The Plague Journal is a log of humanity through the pandemic.  This will not always make you feel uplifted or hopeful.  It will be tragic.  It will be meaningful, moving, and poignant.  It will be hard.

You are writing this journal.  Tell us about the impromptu marriages and missed funerals.  Tell us about ruined coparenting plans and the feeling of locking up your business for the last time.  Tell us about special moments with your kids, and the way it felt the first time you heard silence outside.  Tell us about boredom or how scared you are about money.  Tell us what you’ve lost and gained.