To begin with the harder stuff, the Berlin evening news had a segment about the postponement of burials and funeral services due to the coronavirus crisis. They showed film of a recent interment and the sight brought back recollections of my father's funeral.
I've been meaning since 2017 to go to the graveyard where the funeral took place and to begin to think of it as just another graveyard again. But I need to have someone who did not know Papa, to go with me to help me keep up a stoic façade. I feel I can remember every detail — what I wore, how many people were in the bus, the trees, each flower that we cast into the hole for the urn — of the day of Papa's funeral. It is too fresh.
Maybe in 2019, I almost had a mini-panic attack when my colleagues and I were on a weekend walk and we passed a graveyard that looked like it. I told myself to breathe, in and out; and reminded myself that we were in a different part of the city; and I don't think any colleague saw that anything was wrong.
So I find it hardly bearable to think how much worse burying a loved one is, under the present conditions (the number of attendees limited to ten, not being able to hug people, having ceremonies postponed indefinitely due to virus-related understaffing), for other families.
Maybe in 2019, I almost had a mini-panic attack when my colleagues and I were on a weekend walk and we passed a graveyard that looked like it. I told myself to breathe, in and out; and reminded myself that we were in a different part of the city; and I don't think any colleague saw that anything was wrong.
So I find it hardly bearable to think how much worse burying a loved one is, under the present conditions (the number of attendees limited to ten, not being able to hug people, having ceremonies postponed indefinitely due to virus-related understaffing), for other families.
Then the newscast mentioned that a neurologist and 30-year partner of our former mayor, Klaus Wowereit, had just died at 54 from the effects of a Covid-19 infection. And then, of course, the death by suicide of the finance minister of one of Germany's states, due in part to the pressure of trying to figure out how to rescue the state's economy.
Fortunately there were also cheerful parts of the newscast, and the weather.
But there were good experiences today, too. It hailed a little, white pearls that could almost have been shaken from the blossoming trees; the breeze stirred the budded twigs and whirled the hail; and little snowflakes streamed through the sky and one of them — like the song from The Sound of Music — stayed on my nose.
In the afternoon, Ge. and I jogged to a park. I never feel like I can run or jog for longer periods without a long warm-up first, but today it worked. He is a nice person to jog with; despite his longer legs he went at a gentler pace for me. He also demonstrates the 'social distancing' well, planning where we run so that we wouldn't come too close to others, and slowing down his pace nearly to a standstill when we had to accommodate walkers.
In the park there were the plane trees, whose wintry trunks seemed to say that they had seen war and peace for over a century, and yet they were there still. I felt tempted once or twice to pat them. And we heard a woodpecker in the distance.
But the loveliest part was a bridge, which was renovated perhaps last year and now gleams very brightly. A dense dark grey cloud banded overheard, behind the tan-brown clock tower of the Schöneberg City Hall. Sunlight poured out from behind us. The tasseled twigs of a willow were ochre almost turning into pale spring green in front.
And everywhere, running and walking and cycling and pushing children's strollers through the deeply green lawns, with dark-blue-veined chionodoxa hidden in the margins, there were people who were numerously but safely turning to Nature for cheer and help, at a time of benign but sustained imprisonment.
Fortunately there were also cheerful parts of the newscast, and the weather.
But there were good experiences today, too. It hailed a little, white pearls that could almost have been shaken from the blossoming trees; the breeze stirred the budded twigs and whirled the hail; and little snowflakes streamed through the sky and one of them — like the song from The Sound of Music — stayed on my nose.
In the afternoon, Ge. and I jogged to a park. I never feel like I can run or jog for longer periods without a long warm-up first, but today it worked. He is a nice person to jog with; despite his longer legs he went at a gentler pace for me. He also demonstrates the 'social distancing' well, planning where we run so that we wouldn't come too close to others, and slowing down his pace nearly to a standstill when we had to accommodate walkers.
In the park there were the plane trees, whose wintry trunks seemed to say that they had seen war and peace for over a century, and yet they were there still. I felt tempted once or twice to pat them. And we heard a woodpecker in the distance.
But the loveliest part was a bridge, which was renovated perhaps last year and now gleams very brightly. A dense dark grey cloud banded overheard, behind the tan-brown clock tower of the Schöneberg City Hall. Sunlight poured out from behind us. The tasseled twigs of a willow were ochre almost turning into pale spring green in front.
And everywhere, running and walking and cycling and pushing children's strollers through the deeply green lawns, with dark-blue-veined chionodoxa hidden in the margins, there were people who were numerously but safely turning to Nature for cheer and help, at a time of benign but sustained imprisonment.
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