Chapter 01 - Beginnings
Caroline Mackay was sitting in the conference room of the new office, which she had opened only yesterday. She was a bit anxious and with nobody else around could relieve some of the tension by tapping her fingers on the conference table. She knew she would have to unwind some for the conversation that would soon ensue. She took a few deep breaths to try to calm down. Then she heard a buzzer that indicated somebody was at the office door. Caroline arose to greet the visitor.
Upon opening the door the woman facing Caroline didn’t say a word but instead opened her arms and gave a great big hug. Caroline hugged her back. It was Jacqueline Holmes, a good friend from college. Those that knew her called her Jackie. Caroline and Jackie met in an upper level political science course they both took as sophomores. Everyone else in the class was either a junior or a senior. And, since they seemed to think along the same lines, they soon began having conversations outside of class that ranged over a variety of topics; the two most prominent being current national politics and gender equity issues on campus. Theirs was a friendship that had an intellectual basis.
Yet there were some important differences academically between the two of them. Jackie was a political science major, fully intent on going to law school, with an ambition to work in government after that. Caroline minored in political science. She majored in accounting, to please her parents. Her dad was an accountant and he very much wanted that to become a family tradition.
After their embrace, Jackie asked, “So what’s going on? Your email was kind of thin on the details.”
Caroline responded, “Email isn’t secure. Let me fill you in.”
With that they walked to the conference room. Caroline asked Jackie if she wanted something to drink. As it was after 5 PM Caroline offered a cup of decaf or some bottled water. Jackie chose the bottled water. Caroline did likewise. Then they sat at the conference table and began their conversation.
* * * * *
While she was in college Caroline wanted to be an obedient daughter, yet at the same time she was more interested in national politics than in making a lot of money for herself. Her parents were paying for tuition, room, board, and giving her a spending allowance. She thought that by means of reciprocation she’d follow their wishes for a few years after college. But then, with added independence from them, she might pursue her own inclinations more. The immediate goal was to get a CPA and work for one of the big accounting firms. She took a lot of credit hours each semester while in college, so she could satisfy the 150 hours requirement to sit for the CPA exam without the need to attend for a fifth year.
Caroline ended up working as an accountant for more than 4 years. She had gotten promoted twice during that span, yet she found the work somewhat unsatisfying. She had some other college friends who were on the staff of a local Congressman and from time to time they would invite Caroline to join them in the work. These friends had all followed a path similar to the one Jackie was, on though they didn’t attend the same university. Caroline knew them from high school. She wondered how she could work for a Congressman without being a lawyer. Her friends assured her that wouldn’t be an issue. They knew Caroline was a competent accountant and those skills would be valued in the Congressman’s office. Eventually their persistence paid off. Caroline took the leap.
Caroline liked working for the Congressman. The best part was meeting a staff person who worked for another Member of Congress, their contact initiated by their bosses serving on the same Congressional Committee.
Caroline regretted that she had almost no such interactions with staff members from the other party. The partisan politics blocked that possibility and got to Caroline, more than a little. She wondered what it would take to transcend the partisan politics; surely more than she could muster on her own.
Some of the connections she made were with staff members from other branches of government. This happened when the committee the Congressman served on was doing an investigation and needed the expertise supplied by this other branch of government. She made quite a few contacts this way and even got a couple of dates out of it, though Caroline tried to keep her work life and her romantic life separate, if she possibly could. Then again, these contacts were more like the friends she knew in high school rather than mere business acquaintances. There was no need to keep up pretenses with them. They were willing to share with Caroline what they were really thinking and Caroline gladly reciprocated in kind. Doing so made the interactions very rewarding. There was a real social life to the work, though the vast majority of it wasn’t of the romantic kind.
The work continued to be rewarding for Caroline even after the Covid pandemic reached full force. The Congressman had his staff work from home, except under very special circumstances. The Congressman was very sensitive to the work environment that his staff experienced. As that environment moved online, he quickly made a rule for no back-to-back Zoom meetings. Of course, there were exceptions, but the Congressman made every effort to keep those to a minimum. Then he encouraged staff to participate fully in those meetings where there were only a few others in attendance, but allowed them to skip live meetings with many attendees. They could watch the video recording of the meeting at another time if they felt that reading the meeting minutes was not sufficient.
The staff knew it wasn’t this way in other Congressional offices. They were greatly appreciative for the Congressman’s kindness and insight about maintaining a strong esprit de corps among the staff members. Caroline expressed her appreciation on occasion by sending the Congressman a short email thank you which contained a joke she had found on the Internet. She knew the Congressman liked a good chuckle now and then.
Things continued in this manner for Caroline through most of 2020. Then in early December, there was a family disaster. Caroline’s dad lived alone, her mom having succumbed to cancer during Caroline’s senior year in college. Her dad showed no interest in dating, let along getting married again, and disliked when others would come over to the house and then make a fuss about him. He had contact with people at work. He preferred to spend his non-work time by himself.
But her dad always had a soft spot for Caroline and with her mom’s passing Caroline and her dad grew closer. After she returned to campus they talked on the phone regularly and messaged each other almost every day. That continued after Caroline graduated and began to work. Sometimes the messaging was Caroline following up on something her brother had told her. Caroline’s brother, who lived not too far from her dad, would stop in on him now and then, just to check that he was okay. Her brother told Caroline that somebody needed to do it and under the circumstances it probably should be him. Caroline wasn’t sure about this. At the time of her college graduation her dad was only in his mid fifties and in reasonably good shape. But she had to admit that his being alone outside of work left open the possibility that something bad might happen and then not be attended to, instead festering into something terrible.
Around the time that Caroline changed jobs to work for the Congressman, her dad developed a rather severe case of asthma. They never did pinpoint the cause, though the doctor guessed that it was mold of some type, either in the house or the backyard. Her dad got medication which mainly kept the asthma in check. But every once in a while he’d forget to take the inhaler and then he might very well have an episode where breathing became difficult.
When the Pandemic came Caroline’s dad began to work from home. He ended up not going out of the house much at all, as he thought unnecessary contact with other people was a risk he should avoid. This contributed to his absentmindedness and he became increasingly forgetful. He knew to put on a mask when somebody came to the house and he was diligent in doing so, as long as he remembered to take this precaution. Sometimes, however, he didn’t remember.
Early in the second week of December a neighbor brought Caroline’s dad some takeout Chinese food for dinner. The neighbor did this every once in a while, simply as a friendly thing to do. Her dad would pay with a check that included a very generous tip. So it worked both ways. But this time the neighbor had Covid, yet was asymptomatic and hadn’t yet been tested for it. He would test positive three days later. And this time Caroline’s dad forgot to put on his mask. The neighbor and Caroline’s dad interacted for less than five minutes. It seemed a harmless exchange. It proved devastating.
For the following two days Caroline’s dad was asymptomatic. Then, on day three, he felt feverish and achy. His breathing became labored. He called his son and asked him to come over as soon as he could, but to make sure he was wearing a mask and gloves. When his son arrived Caroline’s father instructed his son to call his doctor. It took quite a while to get through. When the connection was finally made, they received instructions to go to the emergency room at the local hospital.
The hospital was completely overrun with Covid patients. Caroline’s father and her brother spent almost eighteen hours sitting in the lobby waiting for her dad to be admitted. Finally, a stretcher was brought out to bring her dad to ICU. Her brother wasn’t allowed to accompany her father. He was told he might as well go home and get some rest. They’d call him when he could see his dad or when there was some real news about his dad’s condition. It turned out that Caroline’s dad didn’t get into the ICU immediately, as there was no space there for him. He remained on the stretcher in the hall for another 24 hours. A nurse provided him with a urinal and brought him water he could drink with a straw under his mask. Under the circumstances, his mind started to fog up.
When he got into the ICU he was in really bad shape. A quick examination was done to determine the chances that he’d survive. Both the doctor and the nurse who was assisting him were shaking their heads. The hospital was in short supply of medication for Covid patients and the staff were told to hoard what they did have for those patients who had a decent chance at survival. Caroline’s dad never received any treatment. But he was a fighter. It was another thirty-six hours before he succumbed to the disease.
Caroline’s brother hadn’t received a call from the hospital the entire time her dad was at the ICU. Her brother expected the worst. He had let Caroline know what was up as best as he could, though Caroline had many questions that he couldn’t answer. When the hospital finally did call to tell him that his dad had passed, there was actually a sense of relief that the ordeal was over. After taking a deep breath, he called Caroline to give her the news. She promised to come home immediately, to help her brother with the funeral arrangements and clean up their dad’s house so they could put it on the market.
Going through their dad’s papers, they were surprised to learn he had done some funeral and estate planning fairly recently. There were phone numbers for the mortuary and the lawyer who drafted the will, as well as the number of his broker who handled his financial assets. In a moment of gallantry, her brother said he would manage contacting these people and when the time came giving Caroline her share of the estate. Caroline was grateful to be relieved of this burden, as she felt absolutely overwhelmed by her dad’s passing. She cried often, whether alone or while in front of her brother. After the funeral and getting the house ready for sale, her brother wondered whether she should stay with him for a few days, so they could mourn their dad together. Caroline thought about it, but decided she wanted to be back in her own apartment where she would be more comfortable. Caroline reached her apartment on January 8, 2021. She had been entirely unaware of the events that happened on January 6. That bubble would burst the next day.
Caroline had emailed the office soon after she heard from her brother that her dad had passed away. She told them she needed to take time off from work and she wasn’t sure how long that would be. She got a quick response which offered condolences and said that Caroline should take as much time as she needed. She replied by thanking them for being so flexible.
After returning to her apartment, Caroline poured herself a stiff drink, gulped it down, and then went straight to bed. She was exhausted, having not slept well at all the entire time she was away. She slept almost twelve hours. When she woke up, she put on some coffee, turned on the TV to watch the news, and took a quick shower. She realized she didn’t have any fresh food in the house and knew the bagel place a block away delivered. She called them and ordered breakfast, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat down to watch the news. It only took a few minutes before she uttered her first, “Oh My God!” During the rest of the day, she must have repeated that phrase one hundred times.
Caroline had no personal reserve left with which to deal with the news about January 6. She was crying profusely when the delivery guy brought breakfast. She tipped him generously. In response, he asked whether there was anything he could do to make her feel better. She said no, that she had experienced a personal tragedy, and assured him that she’d be okay. While he wasn’t convinced of that, he had no alternative but to leave. Caroline, trying her best to maintain a modicum of sanity and not lose it entirely, decided she should email the office then. She told them that she had returned home, but in the wake of January 6 she needed more time off from work. She asked for two more weeks. The response came back - take as long as you need.
Caroline actually returned to work in the middle of February. She had stabilized some, which overtly mean her crying jags were more contained, and she thought that the distraction provided by work would help her to normalize further. She was mistaken, however. It would still be several weeks before the House would pass President Biden’s stimulus package. But the Congressman was on neither the Ways and Means committee nor the Budget committee. Plus, the Congressman was a safe vote for approving the stimulus package, when it came to that. So he had his staff working on other things, potential legislation that might be considered in the late spring or summer. Caroline considered it all too small and too incremental. She was caught up in the spirit of going big and wanted anything that she worked on to fall into that category.
Caroline also didn’t realize that since her father’s passing she didn’t conceal her own emotions well at all, while before, when her dad was reasonably healthy, it was hard for others to read what she really was thinking if she didn’t vocalize it. Now her disappointment came across loud and clear to others on the Congressman’s staff. After almost every meeting Caroline attended she heard from one or two of them that she should take more time off, to really work through the loss she had suffered. Caroline just shrugged when she heard this.
For the first week or so after her return these other staff members also tried to shrug it off. But they eventually became impatient. They felt that Caroline was negatively impacting the tone of their meetings and making the group less productive as a result. They went to the Congressman to complain about this. His initial reaction was that Caroline needed the benefit of the doubt. She would snap out of the funk she was in and return to being her old self. He asked his other staff members to give her a break and let her gradually get back to normal.
By the end of March, however, there was still no change in the situation. Then the Congressman met with Caroline and told her he was putting her on a three-months leave of absence. She would still get paid at a rate of 60% of her current salary, enough so she’d still have health insurance. Caroline was not surprised at all by this and thanked the Congressman for keeping her on the payroll.
Those three months went by very slowly. The crying jags returned. She thought about her dad a lot and that brought tears with it. She had an old photo album that she took from her dad’s house. The photos were from when she was a toddler with pictures of her and her brother and some with her mom and dad as well. She kept a fanciful hope that she could return to that time and they could be a real family again. Then she would chide herself for living in a fantasy world. After this, she would entertain thoughts of suicide. She knew that many others were suffering from depression during the Pandemic and, with no apparent way out, suicide was a common response.
Yet she had an intuition that she’d eventually find a way out, although she didn’t see what that path would be at the time. She didn’t know how long it would take for that intuition to be realized, but she wanted to wait until it did. When the three months were almost over, she wrote a letter to the Congressman, thanking him again for keeping her on payroll, but informing him that she would not be returning to work, ever. She had received a sizable inheritance from her dad’s estate and could afford not to work for several years, if need be. She also said that she realized she was still in mourning and didn’t want to rush that. The stages of grief take time to play out. Under the circumstances, it would be unfair to the others for her to attempt to go back to work. She received a remarkably quick response to her letter, as if the Congressman had been expecting it. He wished her well and hoped that their paths would cross again in the not too distant future.
Soon thereafter, Caroline found a more self-nourishing use of her time. She began to read books written long ago, so unrelated to current events, and did so while away from her computer and her smartphone. She would download the book onto her Kindle and then put the device into Airplane Mode. What she discovered is that she could sit for hours at a time absorbed in the book. After about the ten minutes or so, the story would completely occupy her mind and she would entirely lose her sense of self. Reading proved an excellent therapy for her.
At first she read murder mysteries; Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett were her favorite authors at the time. Sometime later she began to search for the movies made from the books she had read. These too were entertaining. She enjoyed the wit of Myrna Loy and her exchanges with William Powell. She later found that when reading she would create mental pictures of the characters based on the stars who played them in the movies. And she noticed that when she would put down the book to make a meal, do housework, or go shopping, she was much calmer than she had been. She no longer felt a need to think about her dad.
This gave her the confidence to watch news on TV again. Much of what she saw was maddening, but it didn’t trigger thoughts of her dad and she was able to move on in her thinking after turning it off. She learned to ration herself to no more than an hour a day of the news on TV and not to spend more than fifteen minutes a day on social networks. That was more than enough to get a sense of what was happening without overwhelming her.
As her mood improved she moved in her choice of reading, from escapist fiction to a much broader variety of offerings. She read both fiction and non-fiction, guided in her choice somewhat by lurking online briefly in open reading groups for college that considered optional books to read. This let her range broadly in the reading selections, and she began to feel a different sort of take away from the books, as they gave her some insight into what she would be doing when she “returned to real world.”
Two books especially had a truly profound influence on Caroline. One was Life of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel. The other was, Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, an autobiographical account of his experience while in a concentration camp. Both books depicted an intermixing of horror and absurdity, with the struggle to survive found in trying to make sense of what was happening and coping with it as best as possible. Caroline told herself that she want to be part of this struggle to survive, in the context of present day horror and absurdity.
This remained a strong yet vague idea with her. It all came together for her when the draft of the opinion to overturn Roe, written by Justice Alito, was leaked. Given the composition of the Supreme Court then, it was evident that opinion would soon become law. That realization gave her focus. Everything that led up to that opinion needed to be undone.
Caroline worked on a business plan for a new organization that would get the wheels rolling. Then she took some early steps to implement the plan.
* * * * *
Jackie said, “I heard about your dad’s passing and that you took it very hard. I’m very sorry about that.”
Caroline responded, “Thank you for the condolences. I’m in a better place mentally now, though it took a long time to get there. It's been about a year and a half since my dad died. What we’re about to discuss is somehow connected to my personal journey from then to now. Let me give you an overview.”
Upon opening the door the woman facing Caroline didn’t say a word but instead opened her arms and gave a great big hug. Caroline hugged her back. It was Jacqueline Holmes, a good friend from college. Those that knew her called her Jackie. Caroline and Jackie met in an upper level political science course they both took as sophomores. Everyone else in the class was either a junior or a senior. And, since they seemed to think along the same lines, they soon began having conversations outside of class that ranged over a variety of topics; the two most prominent being current national politics and gender equity issues on campus. Theirs was a friendship that had an intellectual basis.
Yet there were some important differences academically between the two of them. Jackie was a political science major, fully intent on going to law school, with an ambition to work in government after that. Caroline minored in political science. She majored in accounting, to please her parents. Her dad was an accountant and he very much wanted that to become a family tradition.
After their embrace, Jackie asked, “So what’s going on? Your email was kind of thin on the details.”
Caroline responded, “Email isn’t secure. Let me fill you in.”
With that they walked to the conference room. Caroline asked Jackie if she wanted something to drink. As it was after 5 PM Caroline offered a cup of decaf or some bottled water. Jackie chose the bottled water. Caroline did likewise. Then they sat at the conference table and began their conversation.
* * * * *
While she was in college Caroline wanted to be an obedient daughter, yet at the same time she was more interested in national politics than in making a lot of money for herself. Her parents were paying for tuition, room, board, and giving her a spending allowance. She thought that by means of reciprocation she’d follow their wishes for a few years after college. But then, with added independence from them, she might pursue her own inclinations more. The immediate goal was to get a CPA and work for one of the big accounting firms. She took a lot of credit hours each semester while in college, so she could satisfy the 150 hours requirement to sit for the CPA exam without the need to attend for a fifth year.
Caroline ended up working as an accountant for more than 4 years. She had gotten promoted twice during that span, yet she found the work somewhat unsatisfying. She had some other college friends who were on the staff of a local Congressman and from time to time they would invite Caroline to join them in the work. These friends had all followed a path similar to the one Jackie was, on though they didn’t attend the same university. Caroline knew them from high school. She wondered how she could work for a Congressman without being a lawyer. Her friends assured her that wouldn’t be an issue. They knew Caroline was a competent accountant and those skills would be valued in the Congressman’s office. Eventually their persistence paid off. Caroline took the leap.
Caroline liked working for the Congressman. The best part was meeting a staff person who worked for another Member of Congress, their contact initiated by their bosses serving on the same Congressional Committee.
Caroline regretted that she had almost no such interactions with staff members from the other party. The partisan politics blocked that possibility and got to Caroline, more than a little. She wondered what it would take to transcend the partisan politics; surely more than she could muster on her own.
Some of the connections she made were with staff members from other branches of government. This happened when the committee the Congressman served on was doing an investigation and needed the expertise supplied by this other branch of government. She made quite a few contacts this way and even got a couple of dates out of it, though Caroline tried to keep her work life and her romantic life separate, if she possibly could. Then again, these contacts were more like the friends she knew in high school rather than mere business acquaintances. There was no need to keep up pretenses with them. They were willing to share with Caroline what they were really thinking and Caroline gladly reciprocated in kind. Doing so made the interactions very rewarding. There was a real social life to the work, though the vast majority of it wasn’t of the romantic kind.
The work continued to be rewarding for Caroline even after the Covid pandemic reached full force. The Congressman had his staff work from home, except under very special circumstances. The Congressman was very sensitive to the work environment that his staff experienced. As that environment moved online, he quickly made a rule for no back-to-back Zoom meetings. Of course, there were exceptions, but the Congressman made every effort to keep those to a minimum. Then he encouraged staff to participate fully in those meetings where there were only a few others in attendance, but allowed them to skip live meetings with many attendees. They could watch the video recording of the meeting at another time if they felt that reading the meeting minutes was not sufficient.
The staff knew it wasn’t this way in other Congressional offices. They were greatly appreciative for the Congressman’s kindness and insight about maintaining a strong esprit de corps among the staff members. Caroline expressed her appreciation on occasion by sending the Congressman a short email thank you which contained a joke she had found on the Internet. She knew the Congressman liked a good chuckle now and then.
Things continued in this manner for Caroline through most of 2020. Then in early December, there was a family disaster. Caroline’s dad lived alone, her mom having succumbed to cancer during Caroline’s senior year in college. Her dad showed no interest in dating, let along getting married again, and disliked when others would come over to the house and then make a fuss about him. He had contact with people at work. He preferred to spend his non-work time by himself.
But her dad always had a soft spot for Caroline and with her mom’s passing Caroline and her dad grew closer. After she returned to campus they talked on the phone regularly and messaged each other almost every day. That continued after Caroline graduated and began to work. Sometimes the messaging was Caroline following up on something her brother had told her. Caroline’s brother, who lived not too far from her dad, would stop in on him now and then, just to check that he was okay. Her brother told Caroline that somebody needed to do it and under the circumstances it probably should be him. Caroline wasn’t sure about this. At the time of her college graduation her dad was only in his mid fifties and in reasonably good shape. But she had to admit that his being alone outside of work left open the possibility that something bad might happen and then not be attended to, instead festering into something terrible.
Around the time that Caroline changed jobs to work for the Congressman, her dad developed a rather severe case of asthma. They never did pinpoint the cause, though the doctor guessed that it was mold of some type, either in the house or the backyard. Her dad got medication which mainly kept the asthma in check. But every once in a while he’d forget to take the inhaler and then he might very well have an episode where breathing became difficult.
When the Pandemic came Caroline’s dad began to work from home. He ended up not going out of the house much at all, as he thought unnecessary contact with other people was a risk he should avoid. This contributed to his absentmindedness and he became increasingly forgetful. He knew to put on a mask when somebody came to the house and he was diligent in doing so, as long as he remembered to take this precaution. Sometimes, however, he didn’t remember.
Early in the second week of December a neighbor brought Caroline’s dad some takeout Chinese food for dinner. The neighbor did this every once in a while, simply as a friendly thing to do. Her dad would pay with a check that included a very generous tip. So it worked both ways. But this time the neighbor had Covid, yet was asymptomatic and hadn’t yet been tested for it. He would test positive three days later. And this time Caroline’s dad forgot to put on his mask. The neighbor and Caroline’s dad interacted for less than five minutes. It seemed a harmless exchange. It proved devastating.
For the following two days Caroline’s dad was asymptomatic. Then, on day three, he felt feverish and achy. His breathing became labored. He called his son and asked him to come over as soon as he could, but to make sure he was wearing a mask and gloves. When his son arrived Caroline’s father instructed his son to call his doctor. It took quite a while to get through. When the connection was finally made, they received instructions to go to the emergency room at the local hospital.
The hospital was completely overrun with Covid patients. Caroline’s father and her brother spent almost eighteen hours sitting in the lobby waiting for her dad to be admitted. Finally, a stretcher was brought out to bring her dad to ICU. Her brother wasn’t allowed to accompany her father. He was told he might as well go home and get some rest. They’d call him when he could see his dad or when there was some real news about his dad’s condition. It turned out that Caroline’s dad didn’t get into the ICU immediately, as there was no space there for him. He remained on the stretcher in the hall for another 24 hours. A nurse provided him with a urinal and brought him water he could drink with a straw under his mask. Under the circumstances, his mind started to fog up.
When he got into the ICU he was in really bad shape. A quick examination was done to determine the chances that he’d survive. Both the doctor and the nurse who was assisting him were shaking their heads. The hospital was in short supply of medication for Covid patients and the staff were told to hoard what they did have for those patients who had a decent chance at survival. Caroline’s dad never received any treatment. But he was a fighter. It was another thirty-six hours before he succumbed to the disease.
Caroline’s brother hadn’t received a call from the hospital the entire time her dad was at the ICU. Her brother expected the worst. He had let Caroline know what was up as best as he could, though Caroline had many questions that he couldn’t answer. When the hospital finally did call to tell him that his dad had passed, there was actually a sense of relief that the ordeal was over. After taking a deep breath, he called Caroline to give her the news. She promised to come home immediately, to help her brother with the funeral arrangements and clean up their dad’s house so they could put it on the market.
Going through their dad’s papers, they were surprised to learn he had done some funeral and estate planning fairly recently. There were phone numbers for the mortuary and the lawyer who drafted the will, as well as the number of his broker who handled his financial assets. In a moment of gallantry, her brother said he would manage contacting these people and when the time came giving Caroline her share of the estate. Caroline was grateful to be relieved of this burden, as she felt absolutely overwhelmed by her dad’s passing. She cried often, whether alone or while in front of her brother. After the funeral and getting the house ready for sale, her brother wondered whether she should stay with him for a few days, so they could mourn their dad together. Caroline thought about it, but decided she wanted to be back in her own apartment where she would be more comfortable. Caroline reached her apartment on January 8, 2021. She had been entirely unaware of the events that happened on January 6. That bubble would burst the next day.
Caroline had emailed the office soon after she heard from her brother that her dad had passed away. She told them she needed to take time off from work and she wasn’t sure how long that would be. She got a quick response which offered condolences and said that Caroline should take as much time as she needed. She replied by thanking them for being so flexible.
After returning to her apartment, Caroline poured herself a stiff drink, gulped it down, and then went straight to bed. She was exhausted, having not slept well at all the entire time she was away. She slept almost twelve hours. When she woke up, she put on some coffee, turned on the TV to watch the news, and took a quick shower. She realized she didn’t have any fresh food in the house and knew the bagel place a block away delivered. She called them and ordered breakfast, poured herself a cup of coffee, and sat down to watch the news. It only took a few minutes before she uttered her first, “Oh My God!” During the rest of the day, she must have repeated that phrase one hundred times.
Caroline had no personal reserve left with which to deal with the news about January 6. She was crying profusely when the delivery guy brought breakfast. She tipped him generously. In response, he asked whether there was anything he could do to make her feel better. She said no, that she had experienced a personal tragedy, and assured him that she’d be okay. While he wasn’t convinced of that, he had no alternative but to leave. Caroline, trying her best to maintain a modicum of sanity and not lose it entirely, decided she should email the office then. She told them that she had returned home, but in the wake of January 6 she needed more time off from work. She asked for two more weeks. The response came back - take as long as you need.
Caroline actually returned to work in the middle of February. She had stabilized some, which overtly mean her crying jags were more contained, and she thought that the distraction provided by work would help her to normalize further. She was mistaken, however. It would still be several weeks before the House would pass President Biden’s stimulus package. But the Congressman was on neither the Ways and Means committee nor the Budget committee. Plus, the Congressman was a safe vote for approving the stimulus package, when it came to that. So he had his staff working on other things, potential legislation that might be considered in the late spring or summer. Caroline considered it all too small and too incremental. She was caught up in the spirit of going big and wanted anything that she worked on to fall into that category.
Caroline also didn’t realize that since her father’s passing she didn’t conceal her own emotions well at all, while before, when her dad was reasonably healthy, it was hard for others to read what she really was thinking if she didn’t vocalize it. Now her disappointment came across loud and clear to others on the Congressman’s staff. After almost every meeting Caroline attended she heard from one or two of them that she should take more time off, to really work through the loss she had suffered. Caroline just shrugged when she heard this.
For the first week or so after her return these other staff members also tried to shrug it off. But they eventually became impatient. They felt that Caroline was negatively impacting the tone of their meetings and making the group less productive as a result. They went to the Congressman to complain about this. His initial reaction was that Caroline needed the benefit of the doubt. She would snap out of the funk she was in and return to being her old self. He asked his other staff members to give her a break and let her gradually get back to normal.
By the end of March, however, there was still no change in the situation. Then the Congressman met with Caroline and told her he was putting her on a three-months leave of absence. She would still get paid at a rate of 60% of her current salary, enough so she’d still have health insurance. Caroline was not surprised at all by this and thanked the Congressman for keeping her on the payroll.
Those three months went by very slowly. The crying jags returned. She thought about her dad a lot and that brought tears with it. She had an old photo album that she took from her dad’s house. The photos were from when she was a toddler with pictures of her and her brother and some with her mom and dad as well. She kept a fanciful hope that she could return to that time and they could be a real family again. Then she would chide herself for living in a fantasy world. After this, she would entertain thoughts of suicide. She knew that many others were suffering from depression during the Pandemic and, with no apparent way out, suicide was a common response.
Yet she had an intuition that she’d eventually find a way out, although she didn’t see what that path would be at the time. She didn’t know how long it would take for that intuition to be realized, but she wanted to wait until it did. When the three months were almost over, she wrote a letter to the Congressman, thanking him again for keeping her on payroll, but informing him that she would not be returning to work, ever. She had received a sizable inheritance from her dad’s estate and could afford not to work for several years, if need be. She also said that she realized she was still in mourning and didn’t want to rush that. The stages of grief take time to play out. Under the circumstances, it would be unfair to the others for her to attempt to go back to work. She received a remarkably quick response to her letter, as if the Congressman had been expecting it. He wished her well and hoped that their paths would cross again in the not too distant future.
Soon thereafter, Caroline found a more self-nourishing use of her time. She began to read books written long ago, so unrelated to current events, and did so while away from her computer and her smartphone. She would download the book onto her Kindle and then put the device into Airplane Mode. What she discovered is that she could sit for hours at a time absorbed in the book. After about the ten minutes or so, the story would completely occupy her mind and she would entirely lose her sense of self. Reading proved an excellent therapy for her.
At first she read murder mysteries; Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett were her favorite authors at the time. Sometime later she began to search for the movies made from the books she had read. These too were entertaining. She enjoyed the wit of Myrna Loy and her exchanges with William Powell. She later found that when reading she would create mental pictures of the characters based on the stars who played them in the movies. And she noticed that when she would put down the book to make a meal, do housework, or go shopping, she was much calmer than she had been. She no longer felt a need to think about her dad.
This gave her the confidence to watch news on TV again. Much of what she saw was maddening, but it didn’t trigger thoughts of her dad and she was able to move on in her thinking after turning it off. She learned to ration herself to no more than an hour a day of the news on TV and not to spend more than fifteen minutes a day on social networks. That was more than enough to get a sense of what was happening without overwhelming her.
As her mood improved she moved in her choice of reading, from escapist fiction to a much broader variety of offerings. She read both fiction and non-fiction, guided in her choice somewhat by lurking online briefly in open reading groups for college that considered optional books to read. This let her range broadly in the reading selections, and she began to feel a different sort of take away from the books, as they gave her some insight into what she would be doing when she “returned to real world.”
Two books especially had a truly profound influence on Caroline. One was Life of Pi, a novel by Yann Martel. The other was, Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl, an autobiographical account of his experience while in a concentration camp. Both books depicted an intermixing of horror and absurdity, with the struggle to survive found in trying to make sense of what was happening and coping with it as best as possible. Caroline told herself that she want to be part of this struggle to survive, in the context of present day horror and absurdity.
This remained a strong yet vague idea with her. It all came together for her when the draft of the opinion to overturn Roe, written by Justice Alito, was leaked. Given the composition of the Supreme Court then, it was evident that opinion would soon become law. That realization gave her focus. Everything that led up to that opinion needed to be undone.
Caroline worked on a business plan for a new organization that would get the wheels rolling. Then she took some early steps to implement the plan.
* * * * *
Jackie said, “I heard about your dad’s passing and that you took it very hard. I’m very sorry about that.”
Caroline responded, “Thank you for the condolences. I’m in a better place mentally now, though it took a long time to get there. It's been about a year and a half since my dad died. What we’re about to discuss is somehow connected to my personal journey from then to now. Let me give you an overview.”
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