The Big Tick on the Back of Life.
By: Lisa Martens
Tags: Short Story, Fiction, Self, Mental Health, Coronavirus

The Big Tick on the Back of Life.

A short story.

Photo by Ash Wood on Unsplash

The funeral was going to be held virtually. I took a photo of myself wearing black and taped the photo to the camera. I would mute myself and be a motionless, mourning face in the crowd. No one would expect me to speak.

I wanted to be present. I did, but I had to work. I still had a job, which meant I had to be grateful, so so grateful, for my job. And I would still be able to listen to the ceremony.

“I’m not ready for virtual funerals,” my best friend said. I told her about my photo idea. She hung up on me.

There were so many transgressions, so many ideas of right and wrong. I wanted to be a face in the crowd. I also didn’t want to lose my insurance. Then, what? I would be at the mercy of the President?

I didn’t know what was worse: Being at the mercy of a faceless insurance exec, or of the President. I didn’t want to find out.

The person who died had not died of Covid. In fact, over the past week, I knew of three non-Covid related deaths — a heart attack, suicide by heroin, and a brain aneurysm.

It was so unfair that other deaths continued to happen. It was so unfair that our pre-Covid problems still remained.

“I’ve ordered three cases of wine. They were having a deal,” another friend texted me.

“Be careful drinking at home alone,” I wrote back. “We may have to do this for three months.”

She got mad at me, too. I had talked to this friend about her drinking before, and she had been accepting of my concern.

Maybe they were right. Maybe I was wrong in how I was handling it. Maybe I was wrong — but I didn’t know how else to be. There was no real blueprint for what was going on.

What was socially acceptable at the moment? Drinking alone without judgment, at all times of day? Missing virtual funerals? Phoning in virtual funerals? Having the audacity to not die of Covid, but of something else? Being a reminder that life is still happening, it just has this big tick attached to it? That addiction was still there, waiting, with its wicked fang grin, like it’s always been?

“I haven’t had take out coffee or avocado toast in three weeks, and I’m still not rich,” another friend casually mentions to me.

“In fact, now we see that if everyone followed those financial gurus, the economy would collapse. Our economy relied on people making bad financial decisions. One week of eating in was enough.”

Poor people making bad choices and not earning enough money, working jobs they didn’t want because they were afraid of not having insurance; young people agreeing to government jobs, waiting tables, jobs they were morally opposed to, all because of their student loan debt; older professionals, considered worthless in a youth-centric system, forced to have entry-level jobs waving at customers— that was the whole economy after all. Indentured servitude, spinning wheels at every age, every stage of life, from recent grad to parenthood to old age.

What was Covid other than a tick on the back of our existing problems, an acceleration of an inevitable end? The opioid crisis wasn’t enough for government help, stagnant wages weren’t enough, and there weren’t enough heart attacks or cancer patients to usher in healthcare for all.

But now? Suddenly, the curtain has been pulled back.

I attended the virtual funeral. The people who had been mad at me suddenly were not by the day’s end. Emotions going up and down, up and down.

I saw a few people from high school who lived in rural areas. They believed Covid was a myth, a government conspiracy. I felt jealous of them. They had not known anyone affected, and so they thought it wasn’t real. I hoped they stayed that way, in their precious bubble.

I wondered, if they were impacted directly by Covid…or when, rather…if they would continue to make up conspiracy theories about why they were targeted. If believing those things gave their lives meaning, and if they would just run in circles looking for the bad guy in control…or if the bubble would burst.

I wouldn’t want to be around to see the overflow of fear and anguish when that bubble burst.

What a horrible thing, to have felt that you had to control, and then to lose it…to realize it was never yours. At least now, I had a routine…disinfect, clean, cook at home.

And sometimes, when I walked the dog or did yoga in my living room, there were moments when I forgot about the big tick on my back.