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A Plague, a Coup, and a Death
When the hardest thing to do is nothing
My stepmother died yesterday morning. It wasn’t Covid, which is a thing we must say now. She was 94 years old, frail and ill, sequestered in a nursing home not far from Washington, D.C. Due to the plague, no one has really seen her since March, except in brief chaotic Zoom calls and weekly “window visits” for my father. He would sit, bundled against the cold, for 20 minutes while she wrestled with a phone and a nurse on the other side of the glass. Then, he’d return to his lonely quarantine existence, sad and beset with guilt.
She lived a long life. She had a feisty spirit, a curious mind, and an artist’s eye. She could be mean and manipulative, burning everyone who tried to get close. She was a bitter mother to her daughters, my step-sisters, intermittently estranged from all of them. Perpetually unhappy, she spent a lifetime seeking the cure, dragging my gentle, compliant father on her feverish quest. She never found what she sought, the thing to calm the storms that raged within.
She was a contradiction, too. A kind and loving grandmother, an indulgent animal lover. She took great joy in art and music, taught herself craft and built a home with care. The occasional gesture belied the mean spirit, the raging storms: Once, when I was a harried working student and short on…
