Grief Is for People

Crosley recalls significant moments while she was living in New York City, including the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001; the power grid failure in August 2003; and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

As the city shuts down for quarantine, Crosley wonders what Russell’s reaction to the pandemic would have been. She speculates about the ways he might have filled the time. The restaurant where she last saw him is closed, and Crosley feels that she is beginning to lose the pieces of Russell that she has been hanging on to in order to pretend that he is still alive. Because the city is overcome with an air of anxiety, Crosley feels that it is finally acceptable to give in to her depression. She thinks frequently about New York City, especially how both she and Russell moved there to escape their suburban childhoods. Russell attended the theatre obsessively, taking Crosley to her first opera.

As New York remains empty during the pandemic, she thinks about the way that movies glamorize an impossible state: an empty New York where the movie’s character is able to do things he would otherwise not be able to do. Such scenes return to Crosley as she jogs along an empty Fifth Avenue.