I brought this on myself. Not by committing a crime, I hasten to point out, but by leaving the building, which is forbidden. Two months behind on a medical appointment, and confronted with signs of problems ahead, I broke out. And the policy of the geezer house where I live was thus: leave the building, return to 7-day isolation. Solitary confinement.
There are limitless varieties of isolation these days: young singles working 12-hour days from within tiny apartments; frail elderly trapped in inaccessible homes; wheelchair-bound and disabled – we’re all in this together, but alone. My own isolation is embarrassingly fine by comparison: three meals a day delivered to the door, a sunny balcony with lovely views, plenty of music with which to interrupt the nonstop news on TV. But total isolation, for the vast majority of us hopelessly social creatures, is tortuous.
This is a commentary on solitary confinement. There is a reason why solitary confinement is employed as an ultimate punishment, and I think I have a tiny glimmer of insight into what that’s about. More relevant to the outside world, and to these days: all those mentioned above are facing today’s viral version of solitary confinement. It’s not intentionally punitive – though it so feels punitive – but this corner of Covid19-Land is a world unto itself. What follows is a report from inside Solitary.
Day One: On first closing the door behind me, there is a shock of desolation. I grab a glass of water out of the refrigerator, sit down at the computer and find myself in tears. I cannot imagine what it must be like to hear the cell door bang shut, but I have a sense of what isolated others felt on first hearing that Stay Home order. When talking on the phone later with a working-at-home friend she uses the term “unmoored,” which feels particularly appropriate. We highly social creatures are moored to each other just as are boats tied to docks; cut loose, we tend to drift, and the seas feel turbulent and full of danger.
Day Two: For someone who has seldom been bored, I feel myself fearing boredom. I consider calling my friend on the second floor, a noted poet and retired professor now totally blind, but there’s no way to phrase a question about boredom to her without seeming cruel. And as to my unmoored working-from-home friend, a union organizer/justice warrior – her workdays can run well past 12 hours; I think she’d welcome a little boredom. Still, it looms.
Day Three: Zoom and FaceTime have their benefits, but in some ways only heighten the yearning for real-time human interaction. Isolation leads to lethargy, which manifests as physical. With absolutely nothing wrong, I still feel unable to eat. I fix a bowl of plain rice; comfort food is comfort food. I wonder if any condemned prisoner has ever specified plain rice for a final meal? Also: why should anyone start wondering, ten minutes after a nap, when it will be bedtime again? Thankfully, the Rachel Maddow rerun – if I skip the 6 PM (PST) broadcast in favor of PBS NewsHour – sails unmoored boats, now reminded of real problems in the real world, straight into 10 PM.
Day Four: The interesting thing about lethargy and unmoored-ness is that they are interspersed with moments of anxiety. It’s an unspecified anxiety, but then, that may be how anxieties work. As I am one whose moments of anxiety usually happen about once a decade, I can’t say. All I know is that solitary confinement comes with anxieties. In addition to having generally been anxiety-free most of my life, I have also always loved periods of solitude. The difference between chosen solitude and enforced solitude is equal to the difference between night and day. Chosen solitude = peace, beauty, tranquility. Enforced solitude = anxiety.
Day Five: I feel myself having tipped over into something that would probably just give any self-respecting psychotherapist the creeps. Or the shakes. In five days, I have morphed from sane person to blob. I have, however, been firing off a lot of pathetic emails to the Resident Care Director and the Executive Director, they who are in charge of my case. They show up, together, at my apartment. They tell me they (presumably with the approval of the Virginia corporation which owns this plus several hundred other geezer houses) have re-thought this policy. If someone goes from Point A (here) to Point B (doctor’s office) using maximum caution (latex gloves, outside shoes to change, mask, hand-washing at either end, clothes washing on return) one need not be isolated. I resist pointing out how nice it would’ve been to have reconsidered that policy five days ago, because I am way too happy. And besides, I’m in a hurry to go down to the exercise room.
I think it is not irreverent to hear Martin Luther King Jr’s voice booming in my ear, “Great god a-mighty, free at last.”
This essay appeared first on Medium.com, a good site for which I’ve been writing for several months. You might want to check it out.
Early on, I worried about my fingernails. My fingernails, you see, tend to split perpendicularly, making the simplest tasks like folding socks or making beds a nightmare that leaves me with sometimes bloody fingertips. This affliction struck when I was in my 40s – which was a very long time ago. About 20 years ago (I’m in my 60s by then) my physician gave me her blessing to go get the fancy silk wrap manicure. I think she mainly wanted to get me off her back, having patients with somewhat more severe issues than splitting fingernails. Anyway, you can dig in the dirt with these fingernails. For the past 10+ years they have been gracefully administered by the lovely Little Yen at California Nails. Little Yen is so designated because there’s an older Yen at California Nails. Little Yen is a beautiful young woman whose eyes, when she smiles, which is frequently, crinkle into merry little upside down crescents with accent lines springing outward like fireworks. She has two beautiful children, Rachel and Randy, who are U.S, citizens as I hope Little Yen may soon be. And as a manicurist she is without peer. One springtime she painted little flowers on my nails, just for fun.
There is not a day that I don’t worry about how Little Yen is surviving; I can’t find her to ask, or to help. A silk wrap manicure by Little Yen will last for three weeks, maybe longer – at some point the dig-in-the-dirt layer will grow itself out and my ridggedy, problem nails will be on their own. I am somewhere past that point just now.
Something else has been more universally interrupted. When my late husband Bud turned 75 I threw him an OGTAB party, to which invitees were to bring a statement of One Good Thing About Bud written on a business card or similar note. Virtually nobody paid any attention to that size suggestion. I wound up with 8 by 10 framed declarations, posters, canvas paintings and one wind-up music box playing an original message. A lot of the OGTABs referred to martinis, but even more of them said Hugs. Bud was a 6’4” bear of a guy who never met anyone – especially a female anyone – whom he didn’t want to hug. Sometimes perfect strangers only newly introduced. Bud would make Joe Biden look like a cold fish. I don’t know about Biden-hug recipients (who are likely to be few and far between from here on out), but Bud-hug recipients simply knew they were huggable. Who doesn’t want to be huggable? This nation was built on hugs, for heaven’s sakes. Handshakes, at a minimum. When this is over may we please touch one another again?
There is a stillness here. Sometimes it’s eerily pleasant, the silence broken by birdsong in nearby trees. But often it is ominous. Having worked as a hospice volunteer and with other end-of-life organizations, I know the sudden stillness that is death, and others here have experienced it when losing a loved one. So here we are, in a place where most of us have come planning to stay until we die – and we’d just prefer not to be thinking about it in the middle of a pandemic. Listening to the stillness, watching the quiet streets no longer bustling with cars and people – manages to equate with death and become just a tiny bit stressful.
Some of us are more obsessive than others about checking the case/death numbers posted every morning at 9 by the San Francisco Department of 
About that “give the ventilator to someone else” line. I should say up front that this is not some lofty altruistic declaration. Ventilators are not a lot of fun, and many older patients (one physician friend suggested a scarily high percentage) wind up dead on them anyway. Even for just a few days, lying still with perhaps a hole in my windpipe and for sure a tube down my nose for nutrition approaches torture, in my considered opinion. Lying still would additionally involve being unable to write, communicate or do anything else that makes life meaningful. Thus, compromised with a dangerous virus and probably soon dying alone without loved ones of any sort nearby – no thanks. Shoot me with all the morphine on hand and let me go.
