Compartmentalization and Integration

Mom and Dad kept this shadowbox in the breakfast nook at their home in Florida until they passed away. It contains nicknacks representing everything from their travels to Alaska to their swap meet visits after they retired. When Mom died in 2009, Abby and I took it, and have it on display in our home.
Mom and Dad kept this shadowbox in the breakfast nook at their home in Florida until they passed away. It contains nicknacks representing everything from their travels to Alaska to their swap meet visits after they retired. When Mom died in 2009, Abby and I took it, and have it on display in our home.

We have all faced stress in our lives. My sister Nicole, for example, lost almost everything she owned when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. She seemed to handle it well, and bounced back to be the first to rebuild in her neighborhood, but I know it must have taken an emotional toll beneath the surface.

I thought of this on this Easter Sunday as I watched a video from a fellow professional photographer Nic Coury (from whom I bought an 85mm last year), who came to us via Facebook live video from his henhouse with his pet chickens, encouraging us to do what we have to do to survive, but also to pay attention to our feelings and how this unprecedented situation must be effecting them.

I have always been pretty good at deferring and compartmentalizing my feelings. I do that partly so I can do my job when it gets rough (just this week, I covered a double-fatality car crash that killed a two-year-old), and as a pillar for my wife Abby, for whom I must care.

Nic’s video and the ever-increasing bad news about the pandemic got me thinking: am I just going to fall apart one of these days? I can’t just switch off compartmentalization and fully integrate my feelings; I’m not constructed that way. I guess time will tell.

One thing that keeps this crisis bearable, and for which I am so very grateful, is my marriage to my amazing wife Abby. Mac Crosby made his image of us in March just before the coronavirus crisis exploded.
One thing that keeps this crisis bearable, and for which I am so very grateful, is my marriage to my amazing wife Abby. Mac Crosby made his image of us in March just before the coronavirus crisis exploded.

1 Comment

  1. For the record: really nah as far as an emotional toll. Losing 1800 of my people? Sure. But the destroyed home and lost possessions were truly just not very upsetting.

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