Big losses are layered with small ones now. One of mine has been not being able to go swimming, as the community centres and outdoor public pools are closed and unlikely to re-open soon. As the weather gets warmer, I feel frustrated that swimming won’t be part of my summer and I can feel a sense of sadness creeping in. I miss the casual conversations in the changing room, the walk through tiled hallways to reach the pool, and the effortless way the water holds my body and allows my limbs to float weightless in space. It is a moment of refuge from the noise of the world and of solitude among the other swimmers. All of this hit me the other day as I walked by a neighbourhood apartment building and looked in through streaked dirty windows to the pool area. The pool was empty, drained, a canyon in the midst of a dark quiet room. The tiles at the bottom of the pool (usually underwater) were sky blue and there were lounge chairs on the side of the deck waiting for people to return.
Seeing the empty pool made me realize I’ve been carrying an undercurrent of sadness for all the things that have changed. In the context of larger losses that COVID has brought - health, employment and lives - this seems trivial. But the empty swimming pool is a stark reminder of how I long for the pleasures of everyday life that I thought would always be there. The National Park of Sadness is an empty space devoid of activity or sound. There is a haunted quality to it - as if it has been suddenly abandoned and there are only the faint echoes of previous human life now. If one looks closely there are also glimpses of beauty and reminders of the way things used to be, and could be once again.
Karen Gold, Age 58
Toronto, ON
This story is a selection from National Parks of Emotion, an evolving participatory art project documenting people’s emotional experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Writing edited by David Goldstein, photos edited by Mindy Stricke.