Why I am Still Grieving New York City, and How I’m Moving on Anyway
By: Anna Cockerille
Tags: Coronavirus, New York City, Pandemic, Change, Moving

Why I am Still Grieving New York City, and How I’m Moving on Anyway

I lived in New York for nineteen years.

Lately as a family, we’d settled into a rhythm. We had a Manhattan apartment near green space, like-minded friends, and a District 2 school. I was working from home. My husband’s job was a bike ride across town.

And then the pandemic. Schools closed. Offices closed. My husband took over my home office (a desk in our bedroom), while I set up at the dining table, struggling to figure out first grade and Pre-K online, while also keeping my full-time job. We left our apartment once a day for fresh air, fighting for space in a city park.

On the day that property management informed us that there was a case in our building, my husband insisted we leave town. I resisted, as I’ve been resisting coronavirus all along (pandemics don’t come here, right? Americans will be kept safe, right?).

But I thought of us spending days wrapping our faces in masks that felt so unfamiliar and jarring then, praying not to have to go to a hospital that had run out of ventilators, not to have to worry about childcare if we both were sick. We left the next morning for a short-term rental in the Midwest that was not much bigger than our apartment. My husband was still working in the bedroom and I was still shuffling the kids through virtual school and trying to work at the dining table. But we could walk out the door into a little yard where we could feel the grass under our feet and the kids could yell and bounce balls and ride bikes, without masks, without an elevator ride.

We have to leave New York, my husband insisted, for good. He’d been insisting this for years before the pandemic. And I knew he was right. But it wasn’t what I wanted.

I wanted to raise my kids in the city. I wanted them to grow up seeing friends in the park, going to a public school alongside children with a rich diversity of backgrounds. I wanted them to become teenagers who take public transportation and go to museums and who understand that space is precious, resources are precious, and there are lots of ways to go about doing life.

When we returned to New York from the Midwest, the pandemic still raging, we found a changed city. Many familiar neighborhood faces were gone, either temporarily if they had the means, or permanently. When I ran into people I knew, the conversation always was whether or not each of us was going to leave.

Friends who stayed said they are New Yorkers, and they’re sticking it out. They said it like a badge of honor. I felt like I was failing New York. But here was our hard truth. We were spending way too much on rent, and rather than coming down, at the time rents were holding firm. We could make our space work when we had the open, vibrant city at our fingertips. But without that, we were four people on top of each other, with masks and gloves and holding our breath on the elevator. Unlike folks like Jerry Seinfeld who insist that New York will be back, better than ever, we couldn’t escape to a compound in the Hamptons.

Have you ever wanted two things badly and known you couldn’t have them both? I saw these two lives stretched out in front of me, the city life I’d cultivated and worn with honor and pride, and the suburban life with more simplicity and space. Two different kinds of freedoms.

I plotted out suburbs with train lines to New York. We weighed taxes, commute times, school curricula, space for the money, and we landed on a Connecticut town about sixty miles away.

We made an offer on the first house we saw. It already had an accepted offer but wasn’t yet under contract, so the sellers let us bid. We bid over the asking price, and it was accepted. We rushed the inspection, spent every waking hour pulling together financial documents, and held our breath until we were in contract. Four and a half weeks after we’d first seen the home, we closed. The news about the suburban real estate market was real.

We finagled a way to break our lease, and booked movers. Suddenly, we were spending the last night in our apartment, the home that held our family’s life now empty, a shell without our things. When I dropped off the keys, I put a part of myself in that lockbox.

We arrived at our new home the next morning, the move documented by Inside Edition. The space we have is surreal. Even with our whole apartment’s plus two storage units’ worth of stuff, we still have empty rooms. My husband and I each have our own office. We have a guest cottage and a garage and three acres of land. All of this for about two thirds of our monthly rent.

Even still, I could fold over with grief. I love our new house. I love my kids’ new school, and the school bus. I love driving to the store and loading groceries in the back. I love the weekends, where we don’t need drive at least an hour to escape into nature. I know I am incredibly, staggeringly fortunate. I know I don’t deserve my grief. But I loved New York, and I can’t help but feel that the virus took it from me.

In actuality, the virus didn’t change things so much as accelerated them, brought them to the fore. I already knew that New York wasn’t sustainable for us. I already knew that in the suburbs, we could afford to give our kids more of the things we wanted for them. But I resisted moving the whole way through, even as I put one foot in front of the other, taking small steps until it was done.

I’m not NOT a New Yorker. But like with so many things with this pandemic, I found myself letting go of things I’d grasped so tightly for so long I didn’t know it was possible to let go. The city will keep churning without me, and I without it. We try to hold onto things, but we can’t. They come, and they go.

Yes, it was a kind of heartbreak. But there’s beauty in that too. I can look back and say, I loved that place so well. I gave it everything. I want to say that about all the things I invite into my life. The experience of moving during the pandemic has made me acutely aware of fundamentals. The four of us together. Space, cushion, freedom, in all senses — physically, logistically, financially, mentally, emotionally. I hope a phoenix will rise from these ashes for New York, and for all of us.

Anna Cockerille is an editor and freelance writer.