I've been thinking about caring for each other when we're in pain.
IT IS SOMETIMES difficult to remember that the pandemic was a natural disaster, a huge force like a hurricane or a flood, that bore down on everyone, together. Because the everyday experience was lonelier than that, more isolating, like grief.
WHAT I NOTICED in the [oral history of the pandemic] archive, more than anything else, was the volume of suffering those interviews [about the pandemic] conveyed. . . . While the pandemic created widespread pain and vulnerability, it also made existing pain and vulnerability more visible — others’ and our own. It was as though, in normal life, we knew to brush that discomfort off. We made suffering invisible, blocked it out. We buried it in our blasé and carried on. But when the production of normal shut off, so did our machinery for suppressing that vulnerability. There were no norms to contain it. The suffering overflowed.
“What Happened To Us,” by Jon Mooallem, New York Times Magazine, 22 February 2023
We're in a world of pain, both collectively and personally. And what’s worse, supportive communities and personal connections we need to deal with this pain seem to be in decline.
According to the data site Statista, as of February 1st, 2023, 1,106,824 of us have died from Covid. And for every Covid death, there were multiple people in terrible pain. For the patients, it's having no one touch you as you die, silenced by your ventilator from any final conversations; for the patients’ dear ones, it's talking to your dying loved one on a screen held by a nurse, unable to touch and kiss your Beloved, who hears you say for a final time, I love you, Dad; it's nurses devastated by repetitions of this scene, day after day, in the earliest months of the pandemic and struggling still in this ongoing crisis.
Also as of February 1st, 2023, there were 102,447,438 cases of Covid in the U.S Each case of non-lethal Covid brought its particular pain to the millions who were infected, from virtually no symptoms to fevers, flu-like body ache, and middle-of-the-nigh fear. When I finally got Covid a few weeks ago, which brought with it aching muscles, a slight fever, and a complete sapping of my energy, I was fairly confident that my full slate of vaccinations and boosters would keep me out of a hospital bed, which it did. But the word ventilator kept troubling my sleep.
In response to Covid, we isolated ourselves to avoid the virus. We didn’t go to dinner or the movies or parties or worship services for the better part of two years. Our granddaughter did the entire second grade on a lap-top at a table in her dining room, and never once had a play date with her best friend. Thankfully, she seems now to be a robust fifth grader, but there will undoubtedly be a decade’s worth of research to determine the effects Covid isolation had on kids’ learning and social development. And that’s just about kids. What did isolation do to the rest of us?
There is one ancient and proven remedy for healing our pain and unfortunately, when we need it so desperately, we seem to have less of it than we used to. It’s this: we need one another to get us through these difficult moments. We need close friends, the kinds of connections that make us know, even when our pain is at its worst, that we are not alone. But the sad truth is that too many of us have fewer people close by than we used to have, fewer close friends to embrace us and walk with us through our pain.
We need one another to get us through our pain.
Research tells us that the average American adult had three confidantes in the 1980s, two by early 2000s, and one by the mid-teens of this century. We have fewer people we trust, fewer people with whom we can be vulnerable, fewer people whom we can count on to bring food and flowers when a family member dies, to show up at the hospital before and after surgery, visit us when we’re isolated at home. As much as we might need one another to deal with these painful moments, there are fewer candidates for the job than we used to have.
And then, of course, there’s everyone’s favorite current villain in the rise of the distance between us. I’m grateful for the social media connections I have through my phone and computer that allow regular contact with my extended family and distant friends. And I’m grateful that, as a therapist, I’ve been able to work by Zoom or FaceTime during the pandemic with people I’ve never met in person. Yet I wonder how tall they are, how firm their handshake might be, whether they would choose to sit close by or across my office from me, whether we’re comfortable or agitated sharing the same space. Again, it works well enough as therapy, but it is also a reminder of how impeded our connections have become.
Each of us knows that a conversation with a friend we chat with on social media is not like having a cup of coffee or an early-evening drink with a friend, where we can greet each other with kisses, touch one another through the hour, and leave not with a routinely typed lol but with the kind of hug that says I’m so happy for this time with you.
This isolation - and in the estimation of some, the malign influence of social media - are among the factors the Center for Disease Control and Prevention points to in its assessment of the rise of depression and suicide among teenagers. A study of 17,000 teens indicates that in the past few years there has been a dramatic spike in the number of depressed kids and a frightening increase in the number of teens who contemplate suicide and, in many cases, have a plan for how to kill themselves. How do we encircle these kids with the support and affection they need to give them back a sense that their lives are precious?
Even more generally, what shall we do about this isolation that compounds experiences of pain for all of us?
Our daughter and her husband were married in 2005 and, as is now often the case, they wrote their own vows. I don’t remember most of what they said, but I’ll never forget the way Chris finished defining his commitment to Shannon. No matter what happens, he promised, I will show up.
Yes, we need nurses and doctors to do their jobs, better therapies, both physical and psychological. This is what professionals bring. But what about the rest of us?
Once more, I’ll quote my beloved son-in-law: No matter what happens, I will show up. It’s a promise I hope my friends and family will keep whenever I’m in pain. And it’s a promise I hope to make and keep, and I hope you’ll make and keep, whenever someone we know is in pain.