Dear 2020: did you give us poppies, or daisies?

Dear 2020, 

How does it feel? On this, your last night before retirement, being a year that’s fashionable to despise? 

I don’t know if you know… 

But, Hatred for you is trending. You’re all we talk about. 

You gave us pain and loss. Division and separation. 

Now, we’re giving you flak for that. We’re making year-end social media posts about how sick of you we are. We’re naming shows after killing you, now.

“Death to 2020,” 

We say. 

We’re trying, however we can, to give you a taste of your own medicine. Even if all we can do is throw words back into the volley of your sticks and stones. 

…And, who could blame us? 

We’re spent. Tired of our loved ones dying. Our hospitals being ravaged. Our kids being set back in school. Tired of political and racial war. Tired of a world in flames. 

“You thief,” 

We say.

You stole peace and prosperity from us. You imprisoned us in our living rooms, and suffocated our businesses. You ripped fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters from us, while we watched restrained behind glass walls, breathing in our own hot carbon dioxide, wiping tears away with blue latex underneath fogged glasses. 

Who could blame us? For despising you. 

…But, as you and I sit here and talk, I sense the irony behind our indignance. 

What are you, really, 2020? 

What are you, but an agent of painful neutrality. You are nothing. Nothing, but time and truth. Time trapped inside the truth of an aging, breaking world. A world we corrupted.

2020, you are nothing but what we made you: 

A mirror we shattered that sliced us clean open. 

…You’re the labor-pains we earned for ourselves.  

…You’re the thorns and thistles rising up against us, as we toil in the heat. 

…You’re the flaming sword banning us from the haven we rejected. 

…You’re the knowledge of good and evil we bought with our own lives. 

You are nothing but what we made you… 

The fields of Flanders, in which we lie,

Dotted with red poppies, telling our fate. 

You’re a groaning we can’t silence, even as we immunize ourselves against you and kiss each other at midnight in hopes that things might be better once you’ve retired. 

All our indignance. Don’t we misdirect it? Does it really help us to paint you like the villain?

Shouldn’t we see you for what you are? 

And us, for what we are? 

You are time and truth. 

And we are the Dead, strolling through Flanders fields, not wanting to hear what you have to say.  

You’re a messenger reminding us that we have failed. And that no matter how high we build our Babels, we can only ever descend back down to the hard earth, talking different languages and misunderstanding each other, failing to have touched the stars together. 

…Are you the villain, or we? 

But, as I sit here and talk with you, I sense there’s more to your message than is easily recognized. When we’re as tired as we are, it’s hard to listen well. 

Still…

In your groaning, I sense there’s more than irony and conviction and accusation. More than reminders of collective failure and collective despair. 

There is also promise.

Is there not?  

Crimson promise.

Yes.

Promise that the shattered mirror is being put back together. 

…Promise that the labor pains are being overshadowed by laughter, and stomach cramps from guffaws and giggling. 

…Promise that the thorns and thistles are being burned to chaff, and daisies are growing through their ashes. 

…Promise that the flaming sword is being sheathed, and a new Haven is being readied.  

…Promise that the knowledge of good and evil is being quieted by a universal experience of washed feet and everlasting embrace given happily by a Parent running out to greet us, wearing no mask or gloves or PPE. 

Dear 2020, I hope we can hear your promise, even as we agonize over what you stole. 

Because if we don’t, 

Will our time with your successor really be any different? 

When you retire tonight, 

will it be poppies, 

or daisies, 

growing in our minds? 

Will it be Flanders, 

or Eden?