I have been thinking a lot about grief lately. I haven’t been drowning in it, personally, but I am aware that it’s all around me. Sometimes, I have felt guilty that I’ve eluded the worst.

I’ve lost my main source of income, but I’m not waiting in a food pantry line. I have kept grocery excursions down to once a week but do not feel unduly deprived. I have not been able to enjoy a movie with a friend, but I have had great FaceTime discussions with pals about recent Netflix viewings.

I haven’t lost a close friend or family member to the virus, but I have felt a great sadness about the bus driver from Detroit who I saw interviewed before he died and a clip of the ER doc from I forget where who sleeps in his garage after a long shift because he doesn’t want to expose his family.

I see the effect of the disease and the economic repercussions every day. I consider the emotional devastation of my neighbors each day when I walk my dog and see new For Sale signs. While, here in Illinois, we have been advised to stay in our homes, I’m very aware that many families can’t afford to keep theirs.

This past week, I celebrated what I irreverently referred to as Pants-less Passover; a family Seder facilitated by Zoom technology. I joked that we did not have to worry about wearing anything that couldn’t be captured by our computer or smart phone lenses.

I thought about what it meant to families who couldn’t share this occasion in person after a long history of having this springtime gathering. I thought about the ancient Jews, having escaped slavery, taking their first footsteps in what would be forty years of wandering in the desert.

I tried to imagine their sense of loss. I wondered, without good leadership, whether we, in this country, are in for a comparable period of rootlessness.

Shortly after seeing the third For Sale sign on my afternoon walk, I looked beyond a black wrought iron fence into a neighbor’s yard. It was decorated for Easter.

Amidst a slew of colorful plastic eggs strewn around a not yet blooming bush was a stone statue of a bunny, an Easter Bunny, wearing a protective medical mask. The light cloth swatch of material attached by elastic straps could have been worn by a store worker or restaurant delivery driver, or simply by a person I’d see on the street, playing it safe.

I had to laugh.

Anxiety and loss are all around me, and feeling these things are part of being human. But I can’t put laughter or joy on hold until life, and its uncertainty, can be mitigated or managed.

I want to feel loss fully and find the best way to move on.

A few days ago, I learned about the death of singer-songwriter John Prine.

Tributes flowed like beer at a frat kegger; coming from Springsteen, Jeff Tweedy, Dave Mathews, and others.

Like John Prine, only 10 years later, I attended Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois. Maybe our lockers were along the same hallway. I like to think that.

He was a poet and entertainer for everyone. His lyrics were often about love and loneliness, with a strong streak of self-deprecating humor. His lyrics reminded me that every life is important, but no one should take themselves too seriously.

How the hell can a person go to work in the morning/ And come home in the evening and have nothing to say. (Angel from Montgomery)

Ya’ know that old trees just grow stronger/And old rivers grow wilder ev’ry day
Old people just grow lonesome/Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello” (Hello in There)

Bewildered, bewildered/You have no complaint/
You are what you are and you ain’t what you ain’t/
So listen up buster, and listen up good/Stop wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood (Dear Abby)

His words have helped me grieve so many things that daily life in the COVID-19 era encompass.

Listening to his music almost non-stop during this past week has helped me grieve for the bus driver from Detroit and the doctor who can’t hug his kids, old people dying in critical care beds alone, and my neighbors who have to sell their houses, and more.

And I still feel compelled to look beyond the narrow spikes of a neighbor’s metal fence and smile at the yard decorations.

Playing an artist’s music for three days straight or laughing at the 2020 incarnation of the Easter Bunny… no small things.