The sky is grey, the temperature is below freezing, the dirty snow streets are dotted with dog pee.

Welcome to another New York City winter!

But this one is unlike any other in my memory. We hunker down, captured by Covid, and tune into our information silos, run by content masters intent on retaining viewers via non-stop infuriation. The pressure builds until we explode/implode. We write a venomous social media post, down another pour of booze, eat another batch of cookies.

Death stalks us, walks amongst us, hides in the shadows, flicks our earlobes for attention.

Four decades ago, Christmas Eve meant a frantic call from Long Island. My father in law was taken to the hospital, where he died of a heart attack at 70. Three packs a day will do that. Well, to be fair, three packs plus a sedentary lifestyle, plus the impact of his young son’s tragic death two years earlier.

I remember racing to the hospital from Jackson Heights. I remember the crying. I remember seeing his lifeless body on a gurney with a white sheet over him. I remember being asked to call my sister in law to tell her the news.

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The relationship between this man and my wife, his older daughter, was complicated. On the plus side: they shared intellectual curiosity and an accrued wealth of knowledge. On the negative side: he delivered decades of mental and physical abuse.

Forty years is a long time. So long that my wife forgot to light a memorial candle for her long-dead dad this year. Another 2020 “first”.

The yahrzeit candle for her dad would flicker on our apartment walls at holiday time, in cruel mimicry of a Channel 11 Yule Log. But not this year. This year, we mourn other, more recent, deaths. My MIL, taken in April by Covid. My BIL’s mom, taken a year ago. My son’s bestie, taken at 33 last March by Covid. On deck: my mother, with late-stage cancer and a positive test.

I’m told it might rain this Christmas, which I suppose would be only fitting for this shit-show of a year. What else could possibly go wrong? A bungled vaccine distribution? Holiday-fueled super-spreader events that hasten our demise? Imposition of martial law? A Russian hack of our electrical grid? Sure, bring it on. Why not?

Top of the world, ma!