26. Goddamned Lonely Love

Jason Isbell returns with a song from his days in The Drive By Truckers that I sadly think will resonate for many during the pandemic. It is over ten years old, but the lyrics and this performance capture the pain that the some must have felt throughout this past year and counting.  If you have been around these pages for long enough you will know my posts tend to deal with the melancholy remembrances of a life well lived or the happy memories of that same life. I tend to look back and sometimes turn my attention cautiously forward,but for whatever reason I never look at the present here on the blog.

So here we are a over a year deep into a pandemic that many fear, many deny and that many just try to live through.  We sit on the brink of another potential surge driven by mutations and people pretending it is over outpacing the vaccination campaign. I just got my first dose of the vaccine and most days it feels like this is almost over, but one look at the numbers tells me we are not yet in the clear.  I look forward to seeing concerts and traveling again. For those like me, the lucky ones, we have pillars of support here in the house to stanch the flow of feelings of isolation, loneliness or frustration when they bubble up.  We have the luxury of dreaming about the coming future. Oh sure, we haven't been truly quarantined and have gotten out a bit more the last few months, but nothing like it was before the year of the great distancing. For me it is just fine hanging around the house, but there are those that don't have a wife like mine or two crazy girls to make us laugh, and keep us busy. Even then it is hard and many days everything I do is wrong to everyone in this house.

Then there are people that have been living alone or unable to have the crucial sustaining interactions with friends and coworkers that we often take for granted. They face isolation or depression and stresses stoically, but still alone. There are also the ones not as lucky as me to be sitting in a dining room turned office still working and earning money. They are searching for something to get them through the fear of not providing.  Finally, there are the ones battling addiction out there fighting boredom or isolation, desperately trying to dream, fighting that urge to find something to kill the isolation.  May they all find a way to see that despite the distance they are not alone. 

Yes, this pandemic is all too real and there are the thousands we have lost to the virus. There are thousands more we are fighting not to lose as for one reason or another. Take this time to reach out to the person living alone or the person out of work, or the person battling their demons, whatever they may be. The physical distance from people may be real, but love is too and we need it a little more these days.