2021 New Year’s Obit
Trigger Warning: Depression, Death, Suicide, Trump, Racism, Murder, Unemployment…
(Yes, Trump is a trigger warning. Wouldn’t all sides agree?)
Let’s just sum it up as —
Trigger Warning: 2020
Subheading: COVID-19, the Trump administration, and America’s racist foundation
**If you just want some funnies for now, click here.**
2021 New Year’s Obit
…died of depression. I’ll just say that because in each of these, I tell you what was going on the past year. So depression is accurate. But this obituary won’t be like the rest. Other than the fact that, like all the others, I’m not dead. I did not commit suicide. I did not, as my coping mechanism would require, eat my sorrows to death and die in a tub of spaghetti, ramen, and Pad Thai (noodle addicts anonymous).
No, I want to make very clear that I did not die this year. And if you’re reading this, you didn’t die either.
You survived when people who looked like you were being murdered by the police. You survived when the president talked to people that don’t want you to exist and said, “Stand back, and stand by.” You survived when your family members or their random Facebook friends appeared before your eyes supporting or apologizing for a man who repeatedly denied your full, human existence.
You survived when people who looked like your friends and neighbors were murdered and the Justice superhero never appeared. You survived when you saw how deeply the hatred went. When you learned the history you weren’t taught. Read about or saw depicted the genocide denied. When you saw more clearly than you ever had the adaptive and foundational racism of the United States of America.
You survived 2020 when 340,000+* people did not. Did not because they were already hidden by this system. Did not because they were surviving before this with chronic illness. Did not because chaos took them and we won’t know why.
Did not because the president wanted to “play it down” and that mattered. Because he made it political. He said it would be gone election day. And that mattered. He held rallies. He was maskless. He joked and scoffed. And it mattered.
It mattered. It matters so much.
And you survived.
You survived when you were alone. When you didn’t spend your birthday with friends. When you didn’t get to hug your parents, your children, your family. When you lived with the pain of worry. When you lived in the agony of shame. The deep physical pain of trauma. And you continued to survive.
You survived when you lost your job. Maybe when you lost your job again. Maybe when you got a new job. Maybe when you had to do it all over again and again and again, working from home, working as essential. Working with technology you had no idea existed until this past year. You survived even when you felt like there was no end in sight.
You survived when your children needed you. When you couldn’t give them what they needed but when you did your best. You survived when you needed you but you just couldn’t show up.
You survived when money was tight. When money was non-existent. When money was red.
You survived.
And you might be mad at me right now and mad at everything. I am, too.
With that survival inevitably comes pain. The pain of generations and the pain only you know. The pain of knowing you’re not doing well. You’re drowning. The pain of thinking you were doing okay and then realizing you were and you weren’t. The pain of feeling a moment of joy in a world of loss. The pain of grieving a million things, a whole year, a different you. A loved one.
I list all of this out, this pain and survival, to write it into existence. To take what is in my head and heart and in your head and heart and bring it out of the shadows.
You are so incredibly valuable, even when you are just, if you can say just, surviving. In all paradox and feeling. In all grief and worry. In all joy and distraction. In anger and gratitude.
I’m not going to put a positive spin on it. I could point out all of the silver linings and rainbows. I could point out the open windows when the doors are shut. I could tell you to list out all the small things you appreciate (pizza, puppies, etc.). And you can do that if you want.
But right now, in my obituary, I want to give it, you, and us a neutral space. A space only to signify that whatever you are feeling, it is true. This year was what it was. It can exist with you in this world as a neutral breath. A deep or shallow breath. One we can take together or apart.
Additional 2021 New Year’s Obit
…If I was going to die from anything else this year, it would be this damn cat. Our 2020 started off with the death of our first kitty family member, Susu. She was regal, reserved, and mythologically old and wise.
Then right before lockdown, we got Kylie. This cat, that even as I write this, looks over the top of my laptop at the keyboard as if thinking, “Someday my precious. I will step on you and make the screen go crazy once more.” She opens cupboard doors, jumps onto my lap when I’m on the toilet, scratches at the TV, and climbs the curtains with the sole purpose of attacking the blinds. Because we got her while staying home 24/7, we’ve created an incredibly strong (and possibly unhealthy) bond, causing her to kitty pile and request attention at every moment of every day.
If she were to kill me, it would simply be from running in front of me as I walk into the bedroom. She would probably say it was manslaughter but I would want a full investigation. When I know she’s in a zoomie mood, I try to stand still for a moment once I’ve reached the door frame. This allows her to run by on either side of me; however, there have been a couple times when I’ve forgotten.
I imagine it would go like this:
I would be walking into the bedroom, living my life, minding my OWN BUSINESS, when Kylie would, apparently, sense a disturbance in the Force, notice a glitch in the Matrix, feel the callings of Sauron. She would then run legs fully extended out from behind the couch, through the kitchen, and right to where she knew my next step would be.
I would then, forgetting my life was never my own, trip over her, land on the bed, and bounce off (because the mattress has instantaneously become cartoonishly bouncy). Then I would fly up, bounce down onto the TV stand at the end of the bed, hit my head, and create enough of a crash that the goose picture on the wall would fall from above and land on my neck. My “capi” would then be “detated” by a decades old wooden frame.
Steven would inevitably be the one to find my body and after some solid histrionics for the sake of my ghost, he would calm down, look at Kylie, and say, “Well, it was only a matter of time.”
The funeral would be held virtually due to COVID-19. The only beings physically there would be Steven and Kylie and a funeral home director. The virtual family would remain muted, with hopefully enough sadness visually projected through the small screens.
The only exceptions to the virtual silence would be my nephew’s bass drops from his YouTube channel (only ones that had been specifically requested in my will) and my niece’s readings from Harry Potter, (without noting the author, she who will now be ignored).
And of course, Kylie, paws tucked, ears back, and eyes closed, would be loafing on my chest where I lay in the coffin, because she really does not understand the meaning of appropriate.
Now on to 2021.
May it be…different.
*at the time of writing