Here it is, Good Friday. If you told me at Christmas churches would be closed as a precaution against a lethal virus once confined to the Chinese horseshoe bat, I would not have believed you. That my son and a dear friend would  contract the virus and recover, while thirtyeight people in a nursing home a half mile from my home would die,  I would again have been incredulous. 

Words and phrases we have become used to hearing, propaganda, spin control, scapegoating, fill our language. So much over which we have no control, but other things we can hold in our grasp, like my daily power walk. I walk six miles straight. The calorie burn is estimated at around 440 calories.I can control what I eat, much as I like to deny that. I will always be a slave to my appetites. I do this little walk, in hopes of letting go. It takes work to let go, to forgive, and to forget takes down right Herculean effort.

So much we want to be right about, So much that matters not a whit.

So today, absent hearing the Passion Story at my parish, will be an irregular Good Ftiday. Yet the suffering we usually hear, even feel, as the brutal story of The Crucifixion still fills the background, will linger in our consciousness till only Sunday morning. And then we shall feel the reset of  redemption and forgiveness.

Not the kind I would love to be experiencing, but the post-workout mellowness is nothing to be looked down upon. All the contributing steps were taken, hot shower taken, drank lots of cold water, took 440mg Naproxen. I have the heat on my back, ready to shift the heat to my arthritic hip.

I did another six mile walk. That makes four times at this distance since 30 March. The hip starts out aggravating my gait. I can’t get my stride out easily. I will work on that. But that feeling of the sweat pouring out of my body, the air going deep into my lungs is incomparable.

I have done distance running, swimming, walking since I was fifteen. That’s fifty four years. I can’t say it had been consistent. There have been blank pages in my workout diary, lots of them. Yet the workouts are the best anchors I have ever had. So I keep at it.

Kites are like dreams. They fly in the air, as unfettered thoughts do in our imagination. The person holding the earthbound end of the string is forever a child, seeking altitude for the flimsy construction that is the airborne end. The astronaut and the first grader share this common ground. The kite and the wind don’t care who holds the string.

I ordered a kite the other day on Amazon from a company in Bend, Oregon. The picture on Amazon said it is a Blue Diamond, like the almonds, I guess.

Now the question presents itself, “When shall I/we fly it?” Isolation is one thing; a lone field is needed. Perhaps the playground at Ruby F. Carver. Elementary School would suffice. It would need to be relatively free of other people. But social distancing should be easily accomplished. Have the dry, clear and windy days of Spring completed their visits? Three weeks of April remain. We should be fortunate to have the gift of a breeze.

Next a partner to engage in this frivolity and diversion would be nice. So I asked J.

” I can’t think about that right now. My mind doesn’t work that way.”

Does she relish smothering joy? Shattering dreams?

If not now, when?

COVID-19 captures my attention. It shelves the drama in my rather idiosyncratic, but not all that unusual, marriage. The virus’s shadow (an absurd image,really) is cast across so many things.

I am power walking these days because my YMCA and its pool, are closed due to the quarantining efforts. Now, when I take my six mile walk, I pass the Canterbury Rehabilitation Center, a site in Henrico County, Virginia, where 28 fatalities due to COVID-19, have occurred. That is almost half of the deaths in Virginia. And I walk by , from what I hope is a safe distance. The facility is about a kilometre from my home. The six mile walk is one of the fortuitous results of the COVID closings. I had inflated the magnitude of the distance. It is not a big deal any longer to do the walk. Already my times are faster.

Earlier, I had posted that my son, age 43, had the virus. He has since recovered.. I avoid contact with my 94 year old stepmother, just to be safe. We are planning an Easter gathering at my sister’s place. We aren’t too clear how big the gathering will be.

Watching Her Majesty’s speech yesterday touched me profoundly. Crises , such as this pandemic,, make clear why there is the monarchy. Her Majesty spoke for Great Britain. To be honest she spoke for much of the world, as a source of measured wisdom.She is the last figure on the world stage with vivid memories of World War Two. She did her part as a lorry driver.

We know, somehow, that each successive day of isolation, of limited contact, is a successful day that passes in the fight, even with the tragic loss of life. We will emerge the better for the quarantine.

I’m tired. I am a lot sad. I know a big part of my life is over.

It is no use dreaming. It is no use seeking to live vicariously by reading other blogs. I have merely become envious and resentful through the reading.

So I went to bed early. Big mistake. J is watching TV. She has the uncanny ability to find the most disturbing programming available at any given time. 

So I have given up having a physical relationship with J. I no longer feel any desire for her.

I’m done.

It took awhile to work through the pain of Sunday. The dead are buried in a serene and verdant place, a place of honor and respect.

I slept late yesterday. We got the Governor’s Shelter In Place order. Actually, it won’t be too terribly different from what I’ve been doing already..

The big difference yesterday was that I walked for 91 minutes, figured that was about six miles (10 km). I had been dithering around being unwilling to try a longer distance than my usual four miles (8km). I think I will do this distance at least once a week.

It is 0400. I have been up about two hours. I should go back to bed. J is up also, watching Andy Griffith Show episodes. I emptied the dishwasher of clean dishes. I did laundry yesterday. I feel sleepiness returning.

I can’t get that cemetery out of my head. The tragedy and nobility of Michael Folland’s life can’t be ignored.

Right now, at this moment, I feel the tragedy of so many that are my contemporaries. That I’m not in a graveyard like Glendale is merely attributable to my birth year and a high lottery number (129).

I do so want to forget. So much. That, in this moment, I am married to J. Where is a woman, half my age, with a sense of play and appreciation for a “Senior Citizen”? Fatuous conjecture, to be sure.

I bought a 9 lb Boston butt at $0.99/lb yesterday. Bone in. I had the knife necessary to cut this giant Hunk O’Meat. And tonight I proceeded to do just that. I made 2 roasts and had some meat perfect for slow cooker “barbeque” or Cuban roast pork. I feel like Mr. Savvy Consumer. I’m not buying 50 lb sacks of rice just yet and probably won’t. Still it’s kinda cool to hack that muscle into smaller pieces.

On the hunt for a pallet load of toilet paper next.

29 March 2019, J’s brother died, at age 72, of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The disease was determined to be related to his combat service in Vietnam, fifty years earlier.

Today, on the first anniversary of his passing, we visited the grave of Corporal Michael F. Folland, Medal Of Honor, a Richmonder, who served with my brother-in-law. Corporal Folland covered an exploding grenade with his body, smothering the blast while sacrificing his own life. All pretty tragic, sobering events, but this is the nature of war.

His grave is in a small, shady, serene cemetery on a country road about 45 minutes from our home. His comrades in death include a sizable number of Civil War dead, some with “unknown”, as the only name on the marker.

Corporal Folland did not have the chance to grow old like my brother-in-law, or have children or grandchildren. His passing was among the thousands of small tragedies, South Vietnamese, South Korean, Australian, New Zealanders, and American, who died to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.