The Year That Was

goodbye to all that

I’m going through my camera roll looking for pictures of things I did this year so I can recount 2020, line up my blessings and give thanks for them as the year winds down. Nearly every one of the 1,852 photos I took this year are from the inside of my house or from my porch. I have to go back to January, February to find pictures that I took elsewhere: a concert in January, a restaurant in early March, my daughter’s 30th birthday party in February, the last gathering I had in my house before everything happened.

It’s been a year. I don’t have to rehash the low points with you; they are drilled into our brains, they live in our head and invade our sleep and fill us with anxiety. I don’t have to go over the quiet holidays and missed birthdays, the constant barrage of graphs and charts, the loneliness of quarantine, the news peddling despair and disruption. In a year when so much happened, it also seemed like nothing happened at all. I can pull up dozens of events that dominated the news cycle of 2020 at the same time I can envision the year as a compendium of nothingness, of days that stretched into weeks that yawned into months that swallowed us whole.

There had to be some bright spots, though. Surely there were moments of happiness, of elation, moments where our boredom was alleviated, snippets of laughter and pleasantness. What are the instances beyond March that buoyed me in a year when everything seemed to crumble around me? I must have pinpoints to be thankful for, small as they may be.

I start scrolling through the photos. I start in January and as I get through February I realize I have labeled everything with “the last.” Here’s the last concert I went to. Here’s the last diner burger I had. Here’s the last family gathering. I stare at that picture of the diner burger.

What I wouldn’t give now to sit in a full 24 hour diner with one hundred other people, unmasked waitstaff rushing from table to table, the ambient noise, the twenty different conversations floating through the air, the clinking of silverware against plates and dessert menus a mile long. Instead I say goodbye to all that, goodbye to placemats with advertisements for Greek fairs and real estate agents on them, to 4am burgers or 6pm pancakes, to onion rings the size of a baby’s head and the side of brown gravy. February 25, 2020. 1pm. The last of the diner burgers.

I land on the picture of the last concert I went to, Thrice at Brooklyn Steel. I wish I knew. I wish I knew it was the last concert I’d attend. I’d say goodbye to that too, to filing into a small venue, staking your place by the stage or slipping past the crowd to stand by the bar. Goodbye to sweating in unison, to screaming out lyrics together, to the overwhelming feeling of hearing your favorite songs played out in front of you. Goodbye to yelling for encores, to jumping off the stage into the waiting arms of strangers. Goodbye to the venues who couldn’t make it through, to the artists who called it quits because it’s just not sustainable. I stare at the photo, trying to recapture the feel and everything just feels flat and far away.

I scroll to March 5th, to the meal I had at a quaint little cafe in Rockville Centre, after we had visited my dad in the hospital where he was recovering from a broken femur. It was a good meal, but I had I known it was my last meal out, I might have savored it more, made it last a while longer. I remember my sister and I talking about the virus in vague terms, worry just something on the periphery at that time, it hadn’t taken over our lives yet. We didn’t yet comprehend that we’d have to say goodbye to visiting sick friends and relatives in the hospital, to holding hands with a loved one who is hooked up to machines, to being able to soothe and calm someone afraid of how sick they are.

Shortly after that the photos take on a different tone. There are screenshots of hand washing routines, of the NHL announcing they were suspending the season, a picture of empty shelves in the supermarket. There’s a selfie where I’m wearing a mask for the first time and we’ve now moved past the before times. This is where I’m looking for something, anything to cling to that would make me believe the year wasn’t a total waste, some proof of life beyond masks and gloves and the view from my. living room.

I suppose I should just be thankful I’m alive, that my family has been spared the virus thus far, that I’ve been safe and vigilant enough to not get ill. In a year where I lost two cousins - a husband and wife who died just months apart - I should count my blessings and move on from staring at the past like I can bring it back. I keep scrolling through the pictures: here’s the pile of books I set aside to read during quarantine but somehow could not muddle through a single one. Here’s yet another picture of my dog, who is probably wondering why I am home all the time now. Here’s a picture I took in March of tickets for an August concert that I knew even then would never happen. A screenshot of a livestream, which have become artifacts of the time. A jigsaw puzzle in progress. A Zoom screenshot of the weekly virtual Yahtzee game with my sisters. The view from my porch. The view from my couch. They all tell one story and it’s a story of how a year was eaten whole by a virus.

I’m struck by what’s missing. No pictures of birthday parties, no pictures of our annual Family Day barbecue, no vacation photos. Just a series of pictures that speak to the confinement of the times, to weeks spent in the house, to things that didn’t happen. When I sat down to write this I wanted to write about the good parts of the year. I wanted to pick out pictures that evoked something meaningful, something hopeful, anything to prove that this year existed beyond the boundaries of home, work, grocery store. But they are not there. I have only succeeded in pointing out the obvious; it was a year of goodbyes, a year of laying to waste things familiar and comforting, a year of fear, anxiety, despair. I keep scrolling. Here I am baking cookies. Here are the flowers we planted in the spring. Here’s my dog again, oblivious to the virus and all its fallout. Here a video of a drive-by birthday party for my neighbor’s kid, something that is certainly unique to this year. A selfie where my hair is gray and too long. More Zoom screenshots. Small signs of life surrounded by a sort of nothingness, nine months of saying goodbye to things we once knew, nine months thrown to the wind.

I wanted so much to be able to pull out pictures that embodied hope, that would make me think of days that weren’t spent in upheaval. But this is 2020. I don’t know that 2021 will be any better. Changing the calendar page doesn’t change the world around us, even if the hope that vaccines bring will make us at least a bit more optimistic. It will be good to say goodbye to a year that was challenging at best, depressing at worst. We’ll still be wearing masks everywhere we go. We’ll still - at least most of us - stay away from restaurants. We’ll still have empty sports arenas and concert venues that echo with silence. But the mere act of closing the door on this year is one that feels empowering in a way. Let’s try again. Let’s do better.

Goodbye to 2020. Here’s hoping the next year brings us opportunities to take some better pictures.