Love in the time of Covid-19

(Penned on the 26th of April 2020, my 45th day of lockdown)

Referencing the surrealist novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez seems fitting just now. This Covid-19 situation is about as surreal as it gets. In Love in the time of Cholera, Marquez challenges us to see that lovesickness is a malady equal to the cholera epidemic surrounding his characters. But it’s not that simple (as anyone who has read Marquez will know). There is a pervasive thread woven throughout the book that places sickness and passion as parallels. Passion is something that is to be overcome. Old people are allowed to be sick but not passionate, while for the young the inverse is true. And that passion, much like sickness, is complicated and messy.

Not to belittle or degrade the seriousness of this current virus, and the tragedy that is occurring on so many levels; but I’m going to talk about love for a little while. Because, as you may’ve noticed, for as much sickness as we are surrounded by just now, passion and love are two things that are plentiful and powerful at this time.

Love-sickness

“It was a lone voice in the middle of the ocean, but it was heard at great depth and great distance.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

During this lockdown I find myself staring out the window and wondering how many other people in my village are doing the same. The windowpane is the physical embodiment of the isolation I am feeling. There are days when I feel this distance more than others. And while I am lucky and am in lockdown with my husband, who I adore; I know there are so many other dynamics being lived through right now. The couple who, up ’til now, have used their physical distance as a panacea for their violent or unhealthy relationship. The lovesick Romeo who is willing to put his own and his partners’ health at risk in order to sate the passion. The person who is alone, whose loneliness and lack of love is a vacuum amidst the sickness.

You are heard, at great depth and from this great distance. I hear you.

At a time when physical distance may well become the new norm, and our social constructs of showing love and affection are being rewritten, we will find new languages I’m sure.

Learning the new language of love

“Think of love as a state of grace not as a means to anything… but an end in itself.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

My husband came through the front door, triumphantly holding crisps and wine from the local store. He had gloves on and a mask. He proceeded to put the items on the kitchen counter, and I yelled at him for not dowsing them in disinfectant first. To love me right now, is to shield me from the virus (I am in a high-risk category). Our reactions to this new way of being are very raw and unprocessed. I didn’t want to yell at him, but my fear spoke for me. He could see it in my face. We are both learning. We washed the shopping and washed his hands for 20 seconds, and I washed mine for the 20th time that day. And then we had wine and crisps. We learned a little more of this new love language. Much like Florentino and Fermina in Marquez’s story, there is a dance to be done and time to pass before a common language is spoken between us all. Our new love language just happens to involve a meticulous attention to handwashing.

You are loved

“Courage did not come from the need to survive, or from a brute indifference inherited from someone else, but from a driving need for love which no obstacle in this world or the next world will break.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

Our perspective is being forced, brutally and without much grace, to change in the face of Covid-19. We must now teach our bodies to accept a smile and a nod, and words that are unable, as yet, to fully replicate the feeling of an embrace. Words like ‘I love you’ and ‘I miss you’ must be emboldened (or returned to) their rightfully state of gravity. In this topsy-turvy world, a clumsy articulation of your love and passion via Zoom must be enough. We must strive to receive these messages as if they are hugs. It is tempting to filter these interactions through our current state of isolation and frustration, rendering them limp affectations of love. But have the courage to receive them as they are intended. You are loved, and they are hugs.

For those who have loved and lost

“She was a ghost in a strange house that overnight had become immense and solitary and through which she wandered without purpose, asking herself in anguish which one of them was deader: the man who had died or the woman he had left behind.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

To those who have lost loved ones because of Covid-19, I am so sorry. To those left behind, struggling with having to deal with this grief at a distance, I am sorry. Grief and death are littered with memorialisation and reverie under normal circumstances. Now, they are laden. If, like me, you struggle to find the words to deal with death and rely mostly on long hugs to relay your feelings, this might be especially hard. Cling, like that hug, to those memories. Take comfort in the reverie, and memorialise the best you can… even though, for now, it might have to be at a distance.

“In her final years she would still recall the trip that, with the perverse lucidity of nostalgia, became more and more recent in her memory.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

I find myself reminiscing a lot at the moment. Not for some long-distant time of life, but for recent experiences. These experiences, due to recent events, have been forced, somewhat brutally, into the past. Now is the time for mementos and for preservation of those memories. No matter what you have lost from this experience, create something tangible to remember it by — it is soothing.

This too shall pass

“The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.” ― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

I’m not one for glib or falsely optimistic memes about being taught strength and endurance through hardship. Albeit, these things are based in truth. Like heartbreak, this is gonna hurt like hell. There is no judgement here about whether your loss is any more or less worthy than the next person’s. We will all learn this new language at different rates, and that will cause confusion, loneliness and lovesickness. To the person who is alone, whose loneliness crowds in on them despite the empty room, please know that I am looking out my window toward you. To the person who only feels love through touch, now is the time to teach your body and mind patience and new ways to feel whole. To everyone who is able to live their passions at this time, be grateful.

And to anyone who needs it — here is a word-hug, from me to you, wherever you are.