I am on my couch with my laptop open. I sat down intending to do some research for my fantasy football draft tomorrow, but when I pulled up Safari, I saw that Chadwick Boseman died at 43. Earlier this week, I saw social media posts from my cousins about a friend of theirs who died from COVID in his 30s. I got a text last week from some college buddies about the death of a person we went to college with. In the last month, I’ve heard of others right around my age, a little older, or a little younger, die of various issues. This part of life isn’t about “how terrible 2020 is.” As terrible and heartbreaking as it is, you could pick any month ever, and the records would show that young people have died, celebrities or not.
But why am I, at this very moment, watching a slideshow of pictures and videos of my life over the past three years, why am I, at this very moment, watching Emmy giggling, and now she’s running, and now she’s catching bubbles, and now she’s sleeping on my chest…
**
A few months after Emmy was born, I had a routine check-up with my doctor, only my doctor had an emergency and I was going to be seen by someone new. He was a tall fellow, slender, with wire-rimmed glasses and a perfectly trimmed beard. He didn’t say hi when he walked in, washed his hands with his back to me, completely silent, then sat down and made some monotone chitchat, asking me about any stresses in my life. I told him that Emmy had a rough start to her life, things were crazy at home, things were crazy at work, and I was getting zero to two hours of sleep per night.
He said, “Well, your blood pressure and BMI are too high. If you want to walk your daughter down the aisle someday, you better fix those.”
He was right about the BMI, I told him, but my blood pressure was always high at the start of the appointment, and they usually take it again after the appointment and it’s in normal range.
“Okay,” he said, “but your daughter’s wedding. That’s what you need to be thinking about.”
Ever since that day, I moved all the apps on my phone to the second page so that the first, and only, thing I see when I use my phone is the background photo of Emmy, my constant reminder about why I need to be healthy. And yet, I’m still right around the same weight, still around the same level of health. The only thing that’s changed is I’m older.
***
Early on in quarantine, to pass the time and keep our minds off the way the world was changing, every night, when work was done and Emmy was asleep, Patty and I would watch a movie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We watched them in narrative order. Black Panther was toward the end of this order, but it had always been Patty’s favorite or second favorite movie in the MCU, and even though we made a blood pact not to watch any of the films without the other, I caught her one day watching Black Panther by herself.
“Hey!” I said as I walked into the bedroom.
“It was on,” she said, shrugging as she folded a towel on our bed. “And it’s just soooooo good.”
I sat on the bed and finished the movie with her, both us folding the clothes. We’d just had a fight the night before, and we both knew we weren’t going to talk about it that night, we were just going to watch the film. This is the power of art and entertainment – me actually folding clothes, for one, but also bringing people together. And when young people like Chadwick Boseman can do that, when they have that talent to bring people together, to make humans feel connected, whether in a theater or in a stadium or on a stage, or even a master bedroom that had been the scene of an argument the night before, you want them to be able to keep doing that for you. That is the selfish secret of so much of our utter despair when young artists die – there was something special about them, they were supposed to spend their lives making us feel less alone, but if they can die so young, what does that mean for the rest of us?
***
I’ve taken COVID as seriously as I can. I’m mostly 100% telework, I have groceries delivered, I haven’t been in another building besides a UPS store in 2-3 weeks, I wear masks when I’m supposed to, I socially distance more than six feet. But when you’re in quarantine, or shelter-in-place, or whatever you want to call it, the things you let into your life are so important, because it’s so easy to focus like a laser on them, whether you want to or not. But with the media filled with COVID and police killings and wildfires and other killings, it’s hard to let anything in without letting in the reaper.
I’ve never thought about mortality as much as I have over the past few months. It’s everywhere. Being with Emmy everyday has been such a lift – this not-so-little ball of life consistently leaving her happy impact on the day – but it is also a reminder of how fast time moves, like a bright, fiery comet crossing the entire sky in a blink.
How can the days be so slow and yet the months so short? Who is keeping the clock? What song will Emmy and I dance to at her wedding?
***
I started this blog last night. It is now 6:42pm on the following day. I am sitting at the dining table. Snippets of life are happening around me. Patty is on the phone with a friend. Emmy is stacking Legos behind me and knocking them down. Someone is mowing their lawn outside. After I finish this paragraph, Patty and I will put Emmy to bed. Then I will take a shower. Then I will meet Patty in the living room, where we will watch Black Panther again, and at some point in the film, Boseman as T’Challa will yell, “I never yielded! And as you can see, I am not dead!” I will look at the baby monitor, see Emmy cuddled in her blankets, pull Patty in closer, and think, “I am alive.”