Seasons of Change

I stumbled out of bed one morning this week and into the bathroom a bit after 7:00 AM.  It occurred to me that it seemed unusually dark.  I somehow hadn’t noticed that sunrise is coming later and our days are growing shorter.  As I looked outside, I saw that the cherry tree in my front yard had lost its leaves.  It’s the first to change in our neighborhood.  Nights, too, have become a bit cooler.  The season is changing from summer to autumn.

I don’t know that I’m ready for this change.  Over the last six months, I’ve grown used to spending time sitting outdoors – on the back deck in the morning listening to birds and in the evening on the front porch where I greet the dog walkers in my neighborhood.  Autumn is coming. It’s an inevitable change.  Living with change is the nature of things.

While we know to expect seasonal changes, we probably prefer to live as though it were always spring. Yet, we adapt without difficulty to changing seasons.  When changes in our lives are not expected, they catch us off guard.  We find ourselves confused, perplexed, and unsure of what to do next.

Truly, we live in a time when we’re facing unexpected changes. To say that we don’t know how to negotiate many of these changes is an understatement.  We aren’t sure how to live in a global pandemic.  Health officials in the United States have stated that the pandemic will continue at least through the end of 2021. Climate change is bringing fierce storms and flooding, including hurricanes and tornadoes.  Wildfires are uncontrollable in the West, destroying forests, wildlife, homes, towns, and lives.  There’s also the economy, with unemployment having exceeded the levels experienced in the Great Depression and about 1/3 of people in the United States not sure how to hold on financially.  The way we work is changing, with many corporations giving up office space and employees working from home.  Many schools and universities have adopted virtual options for education creating more complex changes in family life.  Yes, the changes go on and on.  How we wish that negotiating all of these changes were as simple as experiencing the change of seasons!

Many of the changes we are experiencing are life-altering.  It’s not easy for us to embrace them.  Because they are coming so rapidly, we have little time to adjust.  In these significant alterations to our lives, there are many things we have lost including the ease at which we associated with others, as well as the routines within our homes, jobs, and careers.  For some, everything they had worked for has been taken away.  For others, there’s a hiatus in work, career development, and education that may become a permanent loss.

Learning to accept the changes we are experiencing is intertwined with grief for what we’ve lost. Our lives now have threads woven through them from the stages we know of dying and death: denial, anger, bargaining, sadness.  We see the denial in people refusing to wear masks and claiming it’s all a hoax; the anger in armed paramilitary militias protesting at state capitals or against Black Lives Matter peaceful demonstrations; the bargaining evident in all kinds of random behavior in which people attempt to reclaim what was lost.  Overall, there is sadness, except the sadness has given way to random outbursts of anger with road rage or vocal outbursts while waiting in lines at stores.  Because the losses are ongoing, acceptance can’t be seen on the horizon.

I learned the complexity of this process during the AIDS pandemic when week after week I encountered more and more people diagnosed with HIV and dying from AIDS.  The loss was overwhelming and the uniqueness of the compounded grief was best described by Kenneth Doka by what he termed disenfranchised grief.  This is grief that can’t be clearly identified, as compared to the grief when a spouse or parent dies. The sorrow is hidden because of the complexity of what is occurring.

Today, we are all living with disenfranchised grief.  We don’t always recognize the loss or the sorrow, but it’s real.  Our lives will simply not be the same as they were in 2019.  The desire to return to those lives is part of the denial of our shared reality.  We each find different ways to bargain to get out of the mess we’re in. 

If we’re experiencing disenfranchised grief, what do we do?  Each of us needs to be patient with ourselves.  We need to be more aware of our needs and to take care of ourselves physically and emotionally.  Talking to others about what’s happening with others can be helpful.  Yes, talk to those who will listen patiently and accept the complex moods you are experiencing.  And trust.  Yes, trust.  Life is changing, but we will continue forward.  That’s what I learned in the AIDS pandemic.  There were so many losses, but those of us who survived found ways to grieve, to celebrate life, and to live in new ways that brought us joy.

Just as sure as summer is giving way to autumn, our lives are changing.  In the enormity of these changes, as a Christian, I am reminded of the words of Jesus:  Fear is useless.  What is needed is trust.  Yes, trust that we can live whole, happy, and creative lives in the future, even if they look different from what we have known.

We have a long way to go.  Even though we practice this thing called social distancing, we can move forward together as masked companions as we find hope and wholeness for a new day, in a new season of our lives.

(Photo of the sculpture titled Melancolie by Albert György installed in Geneva, Switzerland along Quai du Mont Blanc.)