Hold On!

“We have come through dark tunnels before,” my friend said. He had been crying all morning, and now walking the hilly path under pecan and oak trees, we were trying to decompress. The weather had turned drizzly and cool, after having been bright and unseasonably warm for a month. The change matched our moods. It was Wednesday, the morning after the 2024 election. The news had thrown us into an unexpected dejection.

My friend is a former journalist, so he had followed the returns beat by beat, until in despair he switched off the television. I, on the other hand, had avoided the news, the tension being too much for me. I was awakened by a groan from my wife at four in the morning. Inquiring as to what was wrong, she read from her phone. I rose and went to the toilet. My heart raced as I imagined the 4 years ahead. I went out onto the porch for deep breaths of fresh air. A void formed in my abdomen, just under my rib cage. It seemed so bottomless that it could not be filled with food, or drink or breath. Yet, it was roiling with emotion—disappointment, anger, and anxiety. I sat for the rest of the morning, dozing sporadically, and indulging in fantasies that somehow the results were all wrong. Somewhere on some forlorn stretch of road in Michigan was a truck load of uncounted ballots from a deep blue county.

Now, walking with my friend, keeping up a brisk pace, but occasionally slowing to greet neighbors who likewise seemed shell-shocked, my friend reminded me that “We have come through dark tunnels before.”

I thought of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how we had managed, sharing toilet paper, meeting by Zoom, and keeping our distance while wearing masks. I went even farther back in my history to the time I

suffered from cancer. My doctor gave me a 3 in 10 chance of survival. One day at a time, I told myself. Each morning, I arose, trying to clear my chemical fogged brain, and whispered a bit of a mantra.