SURREAL LIVING [T, 4-14-20]

Christ In Winter: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Times of Winter

SURREAL LIVING   [T, 4-14-20]

This pandemic time is not just unreal, it is surreal. By definition, it is marked by “the intense irrationality of a dream.”

When I walk in the morning, that is when I am hit with the surreality of this time. Everything now is just as it always was—same streets, houses, trees, flowers. Except there are no people. There is no movement. It is like an impressionist painting, a still life, a dream.

I get this intense feeling that I am only imagining that we are in a pandemic period, that people are not confined to their houses, that the daily Covid19 updates on the TV are just a “reality” show. My non- rational brain has betrayed my rational brain into thinking this pandemic is real when it is not. 

I have had one other time when life turned surreal, when I was not sure about reality. My secretary had quit in a huff, because her husband was mad at me. He was a big band booster, and the ministerial association, including me, had objected to the band director scheduling a required band practice on Christmas day. We weren’t opposed to a Christmas rehearsal in general, but “required” meant that if you did not come, you didn’t get to play in the spring concert. The clergy association felt that a family should be able to go out of town to visit Grandma on Christmas day without a child losing a place in the band. It seems a no-brainer to me, but I learned that band directors and band boosters can be very no-brain about this sort of thing.

On New Year’s day, thirteen months later, the sheriff called me. “Arlyn was out cutting trees with a friend, and a tree fell on him and killed him. You need to go tell Evelyn before someone picks it up on the scanner and tells her. I’ll bring my wife over as soon as possible.” And he hung up. He did not know that she was no longer my secretary.

So I went to their house. Evelyn acted like there was nothing strange at all about a preacher she didn’t like, whom she hadn’t seen in a year, coming to pay a visit on New Year’s Day. Her method of dealing with anything or anyone was to deny and sugar-coat. [I’m not criticizing. We learn methods that are not really good for us, but they are hard to get out of.]

I figured the best thing to do was face it head on. I sat her down and told her that the sheriff had called me, and what he had said.

“Oh,” she said. “I always get up and fix Arlyn’s breakfast, and kiss him goodbye, but this was a holiday, and he wanted to leave early, and so I stayed in bed. I didn’t even kiss him goodbye…”

As I saw the look on her face, heard the anguish in her words, I felt the enormity of it crash down upon me. I felt something else, too. Unreality. Suddenly my brain was saying, “What if you just imagined this? What if the sheriff didn’t call you? What if that wasn’t what he said?” Definitely “the intense irrationality of a dream.”

I held Evelyn’s hand, and listened to her talk and moan and cry for a very long time, which really was a very long time. When the sheriff arrived, with his wife, thank goodness, he apologized to me for taking so long. “Stuff comes up in this job,” he said. I though, was never so happy to see someone, and especially his wife, who took over with Evelyn. Their presence meant that I wasn’t crazy.

In some ways, I was sorry. If I had just imagined it, Arlyn would still be alive. Evelyn would still have a husband. Kevin and Lori would still have a father. But it was very comforting to feel real instead of surreal.

Now, when my surreal brain says, “Surely this pandemic thing isn’t real,” I still have enough non-crazy brain to pull back and go wash my hands.

Just like with Arlyn, in some ways, I’m sorry. It would be nice if there really were not a pandemic, if it were just my imagination. If I could just be locked away in the basement, the way a civilized society deals with its crazy people. Come to think of it, that’s sort of the way life is.

John Robert McFarland