Hey, it’s Covid season, so the first time you find yourself truly alone is quite a few days later, sitting in the car while your kid does an outdoor, socially distanced activity in the park.

You’ve got an hour. You call one person. One person should be easy, right? One step at a time.

You try to tell them: I’ve got bad news.

They say: Is it the kids? Is it your spouse? Are you OK? What is it?

You don’t blame them. Covid’s got everyone shook.

The asshole thing is, you know this person has her own Covid-adjacent crises.

You’ve noticed that a lot lately– scratch the surface and there is some dark, scary shit happening in just about every family you know. You can’t just rattle people’s cages for seven months straight, throw this crazy election into the mix, and not expect that. But nobody’s talking unless you ask because everyone knows that everyone else has about as much shit as they can handle right now, no need for extras.

“Shut up,” you say, not unkindly, so you can put this person’s unsubstantiated fears to rest and traumatize them with the facts.

They shut up. You tell them, in the most basic way possible. Aggressor (method of killing) Victim. And Victim is dead.

They start crying, sobbing. They have to ask you to hold on so they can tell their spouse because the spouse is sitting next to them making the WHAT THE FUCK face.

That expression gets jumbled as they converse in muffled tones. What the fuck, face? What the fuckface? Your brain’s just trying to make a joke. Probably some lower level of shock or something. You go with it. Hey, better to spend the time imagining she’s calling her spouse fuckface than what’s actually going on.

But the sun is bright, and the kid is out there having fun, and it’s quiet here, and you only have to deal with this one thing.

The person on the phone gets back on.

You apologize. The death actually happened a few days ago. If it’s any consolation, they are the first person you called.

The person on the phone gets agitated. “You haven’t told anyone?”

Nope!

“Well, uh… (Relative) is coming over here in an hour. You’re gonna tell her, right? Before she gets here. I can’t keep this a secret.”

You realize your theory of easing into telling everyone is not gonna work. Now it is a race to tell everyone so nobody feels left out or has to keep a secret.

The person you are currently on the phone with is processing all the trauma associated with bad news, and you’d be a real ass to hang up and make more calls now.

And also? Your kid will be back in the car in 40 minutes. Trapping them in a car while you make these calls back-to-back? Never going to happen. Not on your watch, baby.

But evidently, in an hour, you are going to otherwise put your phone friend here in a bit of a pickle.

And finally, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccckkkkkevvvverything.

“Or, I could tell them,” the person on the other end of the line says.

Are you a coward for choosing this option? Perhaps. Are you going to alienate people by not personally delivering the message? Probably. Are you going to do it anyway?

Yeah, yeah you just might.

“OK, (ALL THE PEOPLE SHE AGREES TO CONTACT FOR YOU) are gonna want to call you as soon as they know. Tell me how you want this handled.”

This person on the phone is amazing. You love them forever. You will never forget that you owe them for this.

You tell them to instruct people not to call, not to send flowers, not to ask questions. You say the stupid thing about sacred space, about letting everyone over here figure out how they feel about this without bombarding them with interpretations.

You stay on the phone the entire hour, listening to the person on the other end of the line ask halting questions about what happened. You answer until your kid opens the car door, and you smile brightly and say, “How was it?”

And the person on the phone knows your time is up.

#

While you are not dealing with the outside world, you are talking all the time to your spouse.

It is a dark second honeymoon. You go on walks around the neighborhood together. You talk endlessly about what happened, your speculations, your memories, your plans for how to handle the future. You cannot get away from your other obligations fast enough to curl up with your spouse. After decades of thinking you know everything about each other, both of you crack open with new perspectives, and forgotten histories, and questions about what this all means. Every dinner is date night. You and him and the kids hang out and talk for hours. The talking moves away from what happened and into new things you didn’t know.

There is gentleness and kind words and kisses for no reason. You are so SO SO happy to like each other, to get along. You feel a strange lifting of anxiety.

#

Those people your friend told on your behalf? They make it about two hours before texting. They text statements like, “You must feel…” and “You are in an impossible situation…” And part of you knows they are just trying to make sense of it, trying to save you pain by formatting the situation according to their own inner workings.

But also? You mustn’t feel shit.

Old You might chastise herself for thinking this. Instead, you find yourself thinking, “Well at least I haven’t killed anyone,” when you start to feel bad, or anxious, or questioning your actions. The bar is very, very low, and you have passed over it easily. Way to go!

#

The lawyer sends the police report. You think it will be facts, but there is a distinct prosecutorial bent to the language, shaving off what might be blurry extenuating circumstances into a fine point of premeditation and ill will.

There are words used that you first think, “No. No, it couldn’t have been that.” But then you realize what happened is textbook definition of those painful terms.

You don’t want to read it. But you still have questions. So you do.

For a moment, it feels like you have the answers. Here, everything as the police saw it. The position of the victim. The location of the mortal wounds. You can imagine several scenarios now, but they are only shades of grey instead of the entire spectrum of some horrible death rainbow. You can see it in your mind’s eye now. This is what happened.

But then new questions arrive. Do they matter? Probably not. But they keep you up at night.

You want to hear the 911 call, because the transcript isn’t quite enough. You have to hear the sound of their voice to truly understand.

LOL, just kidding. You are fucked if you think you will ever understand.

The next day, cherry picked details are in the paper. Later in the day, Aggressor is transferred to the hospital. That part doesn’t make the news. It makes you think maybe the updates will die down for lack of new information. You don’t know why they are in the hospital. But the police report said Aggressor expressed a strong desire to die.

#

You wake up in the middle of the night. The covers are thrown off even though you are a die-hard cover snuggler. You either were dreaming of Victim or they are here again. Or waiting on the outskirts for an invite.

You are not welcome. Go away.

The next morning, you have a scratch across your neck and one across your ribcage. Neither of these places were known points of injury for Victim. You know you are jumping at shadows. How often do you scratch yourself and think nothing of it? If this is a sign of anything, it’s how stress changes your brain function.

You go downstairs and write that first blog post. When spouse reads it, he says, “It’s amazing how experiences are universal, even though this feels unique.”

“What do you mean?” you say.

“I felt Victim too. In the kitchen the other day.”

You both tell each other all the reasons this is a reaction to stress.

Is strangely bonding. Maybe because feeling alone is so scary and having even one other person understand your secret world is the definition of comfort, of love, of acceptance.

At least until the moment that other person up and kills you, I guess.