Faith Works 7-25-20
Jeff Gill
The Hidalgo Effect
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A week and a half after my father died in south Texas, I drove in a rental van with his ashes and a load of Mom's belongings north to Indiana.
It was the second half of March, and as I drove out of the Rio Grande Valley the Midwest already had stay-at-home orders being imposed, but that place had one reported case of coronavirus. Now they have tens of thousands, and they're looking at their first county shut-down of all but essential businesses.
We're all weary of the numbers, and the categories, and the reports, and how to deal with the implications of what may or might or likely will happen. The mask debate is, in my opinion, a more visible and specific argument about the whole general question of what we can do, what we should do, and what we must do. Even if it's going to a restaurant and ordering off the menu, let alone sending our children to school.
A couple of pastoral notes here: first, this too shall pass. It will not be forever. Some changes will endure – I think we will look at seasonal flu differently, and some of the sanitation and disinfecting procedures will stay with us, perhaps because we always should have done them during the heart of that six month annual stretch.
But between microbiology and evolution and treatment improvements, let alone vaccines, this will effectively end. Maybe in a year or so, maybe longer (but I don't think that long), but it will be over. So take a deep breath, and let's face the immediate issues without hyperventilating over "this will be with us forever!" I'm sure they felt that way about cholera and tuberculosis and polio, and those were horrible and culture changing infectious agents, but they were not forever. This won't be, either.
And speaking of TB sanitariums and public health orders: this is not new. Not at all. We've been here before. America has been extremely fortunate that we last dealt with something like this in 1919; concerns were accurately raised, but never really fully developed, about Swine flu and H1N1 and SARS and Ebola, because they never really took off here, for a variety of reasons. This virus did, and we have to deal with it. We actually are, fairly well, considering, and we will have to be vigilant in new ways, because it's probably not going to be another century before we have to do this again.
What we all, churches and communities and leaders and clergy have to be ready to do, is minister to the very real trauma we have all experienced. Saying we all have PTSD might be a bit of a reach, but any trauma has stresses in the post-period. And make no mistake, this has been a social trauma which will trip us up in unexpected ways.
I've told people dealing with grief about this reality for many years: you will find the loss, and your mourning, to pop up in odd ways at strange moments, and seriously – it messes with your short term memory, and your reaction times. Be ready for that, be kind to yourself, and be careful. Take care not to make major decisions (HA! many say rightly, because how do you not make major decisions right after a death?), and be a little extra careful. It will take weeks, maybe months, for things to steady on for you, and that's okay.
So many people have heard me say this. And I said it to my sister, as we stood in the sun by the side of the road in Hidalgo, Texas. I mentioned at the start I drove back to Indiana a rental van. My parents had a van in Pharr, Texas where they wintered, but . . . we wrecked it. My sister and I were out on a list of errands, having flown down to be with Mom and take care of business for her. He had now been dead five days, and we both had adjusted to waking up to this reality. We were fine, talking about things we normally did, laughing and joking, giddy even, and . . . BAM. An awkward merge, a speeding vehicle, and boom, the van was a steaming total wreck. (Did I mention our next stop was to pick up the ashes? Yeah.)
Short term memory, reaction times, skewed perceptions. After a loss, following great stress, there's a price to be paid. PTSD? Dunno. Maybe we could call it "the Hidalgo Effect." But I think once this is all behind us, we're all going to have a little of it ahead of us to get over. And we will need then, as we need now, to be kind to one another, as well as to love one another.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's working through his Hidalgo Effects by writing. Tell him how you deal with stress and trauma at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
