The Forced Humility of Finally Getting COVID...WHO, ME?!!!

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. --Jim Wright, journalist, 1971

I was a “NOVID” for 1,318 days.

“NOVID” as in one of those rare folks who’ve never had COVID. Since March of 2020 I wore a mask when necessary and prudent and I washed my hands regularly and I got vaxxed on schedule and I followed all the rules, and I was COVID free. UnCOVID. Anti-COVIDED. NOCOVID/NOWAY.

Until I wasn’t.

Until one night last week when I was up much of the evening with a nagging cough, something I attributed to a bad cold (or so I wanted to believe).  I arose the next morning early, drove straight to a nearby CVS at 7:05 am, bought an overpriced test kit from a sleepy-eyed clerk, swabbed up and then waited for my results. Ten minutes later it said I was COVID free! WHEW!

But still, I was very cautious that day—I didn’t want to give anyone else what I had—whatever it was.  Then another night of hacking and sniffing and an itchy nose and triple sneezes, and up again at 7 am and I retested and then….

$%^#@! NO!

Two lines, one blue and one pink, on my antigen test, gave me the verdict. I was infected. I had it.  After more than three and a half years of avoiding getting sick from the disease that gave our world its worst pandemic in more than 100 years, I was ill. With COVID: the virus that’s infected 717 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and killed almost seven million people. At the height of COVID’s virulence and power, it was the third leading cause of death in the United States. It took the lives of 340,000 Americans in 2020, 475,000 in 2021, and 244,000 lives in 2022. 

Until last week I’d kind of forgotten (and yes, probably on purpose) just how disruptive and awful and scary COVID was, for a long time. I forgot about the pages and pages of obituaries in  December editions of The Boston Globe. Morgues overflowing in New York City. The Thanksgiving and Christmas I spent all by myself.  Memory is malleable. It can keep us happy by editing out what we recall, excluding the traumatic stuff. But memory can trick us too, let us imagine that sure it happened to others, but it won’t happen to me! Right?

I think I actually believed that somehow—with extra care, Irish luck, or by plain old fate--I could elude COVID. Then life taught me otherwise and I got infected.

I’m not looking for sympathy. I am realizing an important life and spiritual lesson from my serendipitous escape from COVID for so long. I hate to admit it, but I was kind of cocky about my seeming bullet proofness when it came to COVID. In my sometimes too big ego, I guess I was privately proud of myself. I was more careful than others, that’s it. My immune system was supercharged, no doubt. Or my genes kept me safe: thanks Mom and Dad!

I suffered from terminal uniqueness.

That’s the phrase used in recovery circles to describe those addicts who think that the rules might apply to others, but not to them. That they are instead “special” in their addiction, maybe even better than fellow addicts, both when it comes to using and to getting clean and sober. But then, inevitably, they spend some time in the rooms of 12-step groups and realize their story isn’t so one of a kind. In actually similar to the stranger’s story right next to them. Then they get humbled: by the hard work of recovery, and by one inescapable truth, taught in the crucible of forced humility.

We are all just bozos on the bus, most of the time.

We are no better or no worse than the other.  We are a part of the human condition just like everyone else. We put our pants on one leg at a time, as the cliché proclaims.  We are not the first in line nor the last. Nope—we are smack dab in the middle along with most of the rest of humanity.

I write this the day before I get to go back out into the world after five days of isolation at home, resting and recovering and savoring the good food my circle of friends so graciously provided to me.  And so, I remember this: I am just like any other bozo on the bus. Like any other child of God making their way in the world. 

You are too. We all are. 

I’m not grateful I got COVID, no. I am grateful to God for the health strengthening medicine I took and the miraculous vaccines that shielded me and the kind people who checked in with me every day I stayed in isolation, who prayed for me, and sent me a card. Thank you.

Yes, I am just another bozo on the bus. Welcome to the club, John.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.