That’s great! It starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, on aer-o-plane
And Lenny Bruce is not afraid
I hear the muffled sounds of R.E.M. coming from the boys’ bedroom across the hall and a jumble of thoughts jockey for position in my brain. There are flashes from my own past, people and moments brought to mind by this band. There is a certain self-absorbed pride that my kids are digging the music I loved so long ago. And there is the dark humor-satisfaction of hearing my resilient offspring jump their way through a joyous late-night dance party to this particular tune: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” On Dec. 26, 2020, it feels like the perfect punctuation mark to end this particular year.
A lot of people have been sharing on social media how excited they are to rid themselves of 2020, to be done with this godforsaken year and all its misery, as if misery can be contained within the pages of only certain calendars. I have a feeling that for all those who are “so over 2020,” there are more who are quietly grieving the last days of this month, the waning of the last calendar year in which their loved one was alive. To them, facing the first full year without their parent, sibling, lover, or friend is not something to celebrate. There’s not a lot of “happy” in that kind of “new.”
The end of the world as I knew it came a few weeks ago when my sister called to tell me, with a shaky voice, that our mom’s recent MRI had revealed not the traces of dementia we’d feared, but a 7 mm tumor in her brain that both the neurologist and a consulting oncologist were “confident” was cancer. “Confident” was the word they’d used, as if we’d be somehow assured by their diagnosis.
Now I am among those for whom 2021 doesn’t feel like it will be a relief.
As my kids mimic Michael Stipe in the next room, I sit on my bed with my phone and open the images my sister texted of our mother’s brain scans. I stare at them with a surreal sort of fascination; I’ve spent a lifetime wondering what that woman is thinking. Now, weirdly, I can study Mom’s brain, but I still can’t read her mind. She is upbeat and positive whenever I call her, which is a lot lately. I squint menacingly at the pea-sized glioma visible deep in her left temporal lobe. That tiny tumor is our family’s latest and greatest enemy. I hate you, I think.
Hate is a cancer, something deeper inside me answers. It feels as confident as the doctors are.
Across the hall, the jumping is getting manic as the song winds down.
It’s the end of the world as we know it
(It’s time I had some time alone)
It’s the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fiiiine.
There’s a moment of silence, and then the song starts again. I smile in spite of myself. They love it that much. This summer, their dad and his girlfriend bought a beautiful cabin on a lake, and the boys voted to name it The End of the World.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn
World serves its own needs, don’t mis-serve your own needs…
Every moment is the end of the world as we know it. Every single moment brings change, big and small shifts in the galaxy/planet/country/town/family/body in which we call home.
This year, those moments of change — against a backdrop of unrelenting monotony — came hard and fast for millions of us. For all of us, really, both the anxiously masked and the ignorantly unmasked. Lives ended alone, or with strangers in hospital rooms. Loved ones waved final goodbyes on screens. People lost wages, jobs, businesses, lovers, parents, routines, hobbies, trips, time with loved ones, and trust in leadership and one another.
Collectively, we’ve lost a lot. What’s ironic is the more we lose, the more we tend to haul around with us. Regrets and grief, anxiety and hope. All told, we’re bringing a hell of a lot from 2020 with us into 2021. The end is never the end, as we know it.
I’m confident of that.