Christine Conover

Northern New Yorker

Caring Christine Conover

John’s sister burst through the door of our 8th grade English class, pink faced and sobbing, and he knew, we all knew. Nicole was coming to inform him that their grandfather, who had been fighting for his life in the hospital, had just passed. The day before, he shared with us what his family was going through. John was a rather large fourteenyear-old boy, nearly six feet, stocky, a football Oriana Erhardt player, a lineman actually, and he already had the beginnings of stubbly facial hair. We quietly watched as he got up and gathered his things with the help of his sister and our teacher. I could tell he was putting on a poker face, and I felt so bad for him. His sister was sniffling in between the sounds of opening and closing backpack zippers as she stuffed books and papers inside for him. When our teacher said she was very sorry for his loss and hugged him, John broke down and cried like a little boy. He sounded nothing like the young man he looked like. No one laughed at him. This was a serious moment for all of us. I twisted in my desk to exchange a nervous glance with a nearby classmate and I saw her tears, too. Then another. A couple students got up to comfort John and Nicole and they were crying too. I started to fight back my own tears and I was a bit embarrassed. I was a newer student, only two months there, and I didn’t even know either of them very well other than the casual classroom interactions or simple “hello’s” in the hallway. I never met their grandfather, but seeing their pain alone was enough to invoke sadness in me and our classmates. After they left, our teacher asked if we were all okay and let us know that there was no shame in crying when faced with sadness, whether our own or someone else’s. It’s our human nature, after all, she said. She gave a quick speech about sharing grief with our friends to take the burden from them and inserted something Biblical into it if I recall. Though I did not know the man they were grieving, their pain was enough to shed some tears for. Humans naturally seek companionship with others and most of us tend to share in the joy and sadness others experience. At least those of us who aren’t sociopaths, right? The entertainment industry provides us various outlets so we can indulge in scenarios that aren’t even real to our lives but invoke reactions in us when we view simulations of the interactions of others. Think about it: how many times have we seen TV shows, news articles, social media videos, posts, and images of other people’s experiences, and we share them, or feel happiness for a stranger who’s won the lottery or finds out their cancer is in remission? When someone proposes in a park, strangers watch, take photos, and congratulate the happy couple. We indulge in chick flicks so we can experience the emotional roller coaster of seeing a scorned divorcee move back to her hometown, rediscover herself, and fall in love again. What about when we see a tiny widow sobbing in the grocery store because she went to buy her recently deceased husband’s favorite cereal and for a split second she forgot he wasn’t going to be home when she got there. That happened to me, and I found myself hugging a crying stranger in Market 32 while I felt her shaking in my arms. I didn’t even know her name when I approached her, yet I felt the urge to comfort her. But why? Why did Hamlet cry for Hecuba? It’s who we are. It’s why we rush to help when a stranger’s child falls in public and screams in pain.

Northern New Yorker We are connected to one another by something invisible that we are sometimes unable to describe. It’s why we hold doors open for the elderly, people with full arms, moms with strollers, or moms still growing their baby. We don’t have to, we just do. And we scowl at those who don’t.

It’s why my teenager rushes to burning buildings and risks her life to save strangers, rescue their pets, and works with a team of others willing to make that same sacrifice to save their home. Most of us are hardwired to care about others and find the ways we can help them, and it’s what we hope others will do for us when we are vulnerable. It’s why we should care about Hae Mihn Lee. It’s why we want her killer to spend their life locked up. As the mother of a girl about the same age as she was when she was brutally murdered, I couldn’t help but think about the pain Hae’s mom, must have endured losing her. I pictured her laying in Hae’s bed curled up, not even wanting to wash her baby’s bed sheets ever again because she was simply there not long before, and now, she wasn’t. I’m assuming she felt such desperation for justice, that if you had told her there was a chance Adnan Syed was innocent, she wouldn’t have believed it anyway. This is also why we should care about Adnan as well: what if our system has imprisoned an innocent victim? What about the pain of his family from all of this? What about all the other 2% to 10% of those in prison who are also innocent? (John Grisham, Chicago Tribune, Mar. 14th, 2018, 4:40pm). Hearing that statistic is horrifying for me.

I feel that we help those we feel we have the power to assist as best as we can. There are those who give too much of themselves, who deplete their own resources, maybe caring too much; or maybe it’s what we all need to do? Then we have the exception of those who just don’t care about anyone else at all. Overall, most people care about others. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light so much of the helpfulness and the selfishness of our society. Hundreds of thousands of our nation’s citizens have died from COVID-19 and complications from it. A lot of those were preventable. I have lost two family members from this pandemic, and just recently a childhood friend. Currently another family member is hospitalized, another is at home recovering, and my best friend just lost her uncle to it days ago. I can’t even begin to count how many more people I know who have recovered from it, had to be hospitalized, or lost someone they love to COVID-19.

I work in a pharmacy and I’m sure most days I am there I am exposed to at least one person who has the virus and doesn’t know or doesn’t care. It’s disheartening how many people walk in without a mask, hacking, coughing, sneezing, obviously sick, purchasing COVID home tests, cold medicine, cough drops, and Pepto-Bismol, so casually, and I just know this person can potentially infect me, and I will bring it home to my asthmatic child, and they don’t even care at all. I must fake my professional customer service skills to them while discreetly stepping back and slathering myself in hand sanitizer and praying that plexiglass screen they are whooping all over keeps me safe from their illness and selfishness. Those same people demand that as a poor single, divorced mother in college, that I also maintain a job. A job where they expect impeccable service with a smile in exchange for poverty level wages, and they can’t even make a small sacrifice by wearing a mask for five minutes or staying home when sick so that my children and I can live. Either way, I’m damned.

Jacob Colbert

Northern New Yorker I’ve overheard customers chatting with other customers about “Oh, I’m sure it’s just a cold, but I am waiting for results, so I have to run errands in case they quarantine me”, and they go around shopping like normal. Then misinformation gets passed around regarding the vaccine, people who could be getting it are refusing to, because they believe conspiracy theories, or simply feel they are entitled to not have to be a part of the effort to protect our most vulnerable from this virus. But as soon as they get sick, or someone they love does, they sure do line up for medical treatment or ask for prayers. I have decided to believe those types of people have something deeply damaged inside of them and they lack a basic education.

Unfortunately, by the time a person is an adult there isn’t much hope for cultivating decency, if their families failed to teach them during adolescence. Kindness is taught in the home from infancy. Babies stare at faces and react to the expressions they see. This means the ability to care about others is biologically ingrained in us. Whether it is nurtured properly is the contributing factor into one’s level of empathy after childhood. That is why our mothers told us to think of starving children who had no access to food when we declined it simply because we didn’t like the taste. It is unfortunate we have just enough people in our world that do not possess the positive character qualities such as compassion, and they sometimes ruin it for us. Thankfully, most of us cry a little when we see sad, sick, injured, starving puppies in muddy crates across our TV screens while Sarah McLaughlin sings “Angel”.

We need more of those good, kind, generous people. We need to be them, and we need to raise them. Or what hope does humanity have at all?

Nathan Cheney