Distancing: Saying Goodbye Under Quarantine / 隔离：疫情之下的送别

When V called a month ago to tell me that he was leaving for a new job abroad, news about the virus in the U.S. was still muted while the outbreak was just starting its decline in China. V had been such a loyal fixture in my life and a steady source of support for everyone in our small group of friends. He is also extremely averse to any kind of attention--even under the most lighthearted circumstances, he is so unassuming that it's become a joke among us to start a conversation about him just to count down how long it takes for him to change the subject. To fix any kind of praise or appreciation on him, we always have to wrestle him down with either brutal teasing or painstaking casualness. I planned to invite him out to a dinner with our friends before he left, where he might be able to pretend that his presence was incidental to our gathering. 

Yet of course, in these last weeks leading up to his departure, everything around us changed--first slowly, and then all at once. It seemed to me that we had not quite finished worrying aloud that our schools and bosses were not taking the impending outbreak seriously enough when suddenly our classes were canceled, our offices closed, and restaurants ordered shut. Always one to defer, V trailed off notifying the rest of our friends about his departure, reluctant for his news to detract from the historic unfolding in our lives. 

As we were suspended in the ambiguity of that shifting moment, gathering to say goodbye felt at once natural and vain, essential and weightless against the gravity of the outbreak. Yet it didn't feel as if there were anything else that could fill the void. It didn't immediately occur to me to suggest that we try to arrange something online--a videoconference still felt like a too-shallow substitute.

But my intuitions were rapidly shifting without my realizing. I came across an article in New York Magazine about a woman resigned to spending her birthday on her own with cold symptoms before her friends surprised her in a Google hangout, and they ate cake and drank Coronas in front of their computers until midnight. And then a week later, I wept as I watched Angela Merkel say that although we have always known affection as physical closeness or touch, now distance is the only way to express care. I was mourning what we were losing in this moment, but also I felt the connection and synchronicity of our self-isolation click into focus: insisting on our physical estrangement is not only an affirmation of our affection for the people we know, but radiates outward as an expression of solidarity in our shared vulnerability and interdependence.

By this week of V's departure, it felt profoundly anti-social to insist on meeting up in person, but this new subtext to distance lent dignity to my suggestion that we should surprise him online. Everyone agreed and began arranging logistics as if this were how we always gathered, and at the last minute I wrote up some silly lyrics to the tune of that sentimental love song "The Moon Represents My Heart."

V ended up logging on late when we weren't expecting him, and so our intended surprise was uncoordinated and anticlimactic. We also weren't able to get through the song completely--some of the verses turned out to be too ridiculous, others too sentimental, and we couldn't stop laughing out of our acutely felt embarrassment over our effort to make V's farewell special. We talked about the virus, of course, and about the mundanity of our routines. Some of us ate on screen, subjecting ourselves to commentary on our technique. We showed each other conspiracy theories on YouTube. We tried having another go at the song. It was wonderful. 

We also talked about how we would keep up with one another through our quarantine, and what we could contribute together during crisis. We are all bookish and feckless enough that the first suggestion was starting a reading group. V will be as much a part of it as he ever would have been. In this moment where we must all keep our distance, friendship will not be factored by distance but by overlapping time and experience. I am so grateful to have found in my friends greater sweetness and solidarity in this time of anxiety and isolation. I know that much is emerging within us, and much has already begun, all of which we will need in the harder times that we have yet to face. 

XX虽然你不喜欢

焦点到你身上转

你离开之前

还是无法免

我们的送别

XX虽然你不喜欢

表达很多遗憾

我们不得不

回头念一念

和你同在的时间

希望你的努力

稳定发挥在香港

每天在脸书发

你没读过的文章

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让自己偷偷懒

你得抽出时

休闲的几日

弥补朋友的分散

朋友靠多么近

从今只能视频见

隔离了一段时间

你在哪都一样亲

XX虽然你不喜欢

焦点到你身上转

你离开之前

还是无法免

我们的送别

XX虽然你不喜欢

表达很多遗憾

我们不得不

回头念一念

和你同在的时间