As if things around here haven’t been dramatic enough, Mom finally went to see a new orthopedist in November, to check on the pain in her left leg, and the new doctor confirmed that the left hip is now at the bone on bone stage and needs to be replaced, like, now.
I keep having flashbacks to two summers ago when Mom had her right hip replaced, and ended up needing a second surgery six weeks later to fix the mistakes of the first surgery, and then had to be hospitalized again a few weeks later when fluid filled her lungs as a result of the two anesthesias. I spent that whole summer feeling like the world was crashing down, and now, after losing two dogs in two months and with Mom going in for surgery again, my existential dread is back in the danger zone.
And then came Covid.
The day before Ellie died, Mom and I went for our yearly Covid shots and quickly forgot about them in our grief. Within a week I had what I thought was a cold, and it made sense to me that I would get sick given how awful I felt at losing Ellie, so I didn’t question it. Though I do remember thinking, huh, this is the first cold I’ve had since before the whole Covid thing started.
When I finally had the energy to go out and do my chores I wore a KN95 face mask, thinking I just didn’t want to spread what was left of my cold. I went to the drug store and did some food shopping, and then I went home to take five naps. The symptoms of the cold (sneezing and coughing and nausea and feeling like my limbs were about to fall off) seemed to be over, but I still thought I should wear my mask when I went to teach the kids, just in case.
I’ve been organizing things around the living room, since Ellie’s death, so when I got home from teaching that day and was too tired to move from the couch, my eye caught on a box of Covid home tests across the room and I thought, huh, maybe I should just check. I don’t know why this thought didn’t occur to me before I went out, but it didn’t. Honestly, I’d taken so many tests over the past few years, each time I had a bad allergy day or heard about someone who’d gotten Covid, and the tests had always been negative, so it just seemed like a science experiment, and a way to use up the leftover home tests now that they were a month or two out of date.
I took the test, and it was positive. So I took another test, and it was positive too. Then Mom took a test and she was positive too, and I felt like shit. I wrote to my boss to let her know I had Covid, expecting her to be in a rage that I’d been so stupid to not think of taking the tests before coming to work, but, of course, she was kind and just asked how I was feeling and what she should teach when she subbed for my class.
I have never missed work since I started this job. It’s a very part time job, so that’s probably not as big of an achievement as it seems, but to me it’s a big deal, because I am often very, very tired and I always impress myself when I get up and out and actually manage to drive safely and even teach. I had on my KN95 mask for the two hours I’d been at school with the kids, and most of my symptoms were already gone, so, fingers crossed, I didn’t get anyone sick. But even knowing all of that, I felt like a mass murderer (I’ve been watching the news a lot, and the way the world seems to think every Jew is killing people just by being Jewish has hit me hard. My father made it clear that, as a female, I was the cause of all evil in the world, and now large swaths of the world seem to think that being born Jewish makes me the cause of all evil too, so…I’m feeling it).
I don’t know where I got Covid from, and the fact that I gave it to Mom, who was already suffering with her hip pain, just sucks. But we spent the next few days at home, rescheduling Mom’s pre-op testing appointments, and hoping for the best.
And now that we’ve both been feeling better, at least Covid-wise, I’m back to grieving for Ellie, and being consumed by the news about Israel, and worrying about all of the doctors’ appointments coming up, and having nightmares about what will happen during the surgery, and after.
In normal, and even not so normal times, Mom does everything she can to make things easier for me, often too much. But she won’t be able to help with anything for a while – not cooking or cleaning, certainly not errands and laundry and food shopping; and there’s no dog to help lift my spirits and put things in perspective, and it’s so dark and it’s getting cold and the world is such a scary place and…
I know I’m supposed to be an adult, with all kinds of inner resources and strengths to manage things like this, and I’m doing my best, watching as many Christmas movies as possible to distract myself, and taking each challenge one at a time, but I’m not okay. I want Ellie back and I want Mom to be healthy and I want the war to be over. Now.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 