BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, MONDAY APRIL 6, 2020) — It is borderline impossible for a journalist or writer of any kind not to report or ruminate on COVID-19. There is so much happening so fast, with so much to say and so many unknowns.

Today, however, we must aver.

The pandemic has led to death. The Big D has been in the air, and it’s death that leads THE PLANET today.

In our 68 years, we’ve seen our share, particularly during the past decade. The closest loved ones, gone. The lump cannot be swallowed. There is no “coming to terms” unless, in the end, it involves acceptance. Ah, but try to get there. Active forces it. Passive avoids it. Dealing with the death of someone close to you is probably the toughest task the living ever face. When it descends, it comes dressed in a burial shroud that, try as you might to avoid it, envelopes you along with the deceased.

Typically, when we hear of the passing of a distant acquaintance, we shrug and move on without missing a beat. Today, however, we write about the death of someone we barely knew because of … the answer escapes. In retrospect, it’s most likely because of the weirdness of these pandemic times and the utter suddenness of the demise. Solid ground has been replaced with quicksand.

We speak about the death of a bride of four years, a seemingly healthy woman who nearly seven weeks ago gave birth to a beautiful baby boy just days after her loving husband lost his father. Grief dosed with new tragedy. Sadness preparing a niche for a statue of doom. We’re all on our way there.

This young woman, beloved by many, dropped dead suddenly Friday. No warning. No chance for goodbyes. No instinct or shared expression of life’s final murmur.

Just. Gone.

Requiem in Pace, Jessica Passetto Cutler, wife of our good friend Josh Cutler and new mom to a baby named James.

THE PLANET didn’t know Jessica, although we met her a few times before she married her man. It was the proverbial great match, one you knew would last “till death did they part.” Why did the parting have to come so soon? It’s like that with every death, that mountainous question of “Why?” No climber has ever scaled the peak. Its summit is the loneliest place on or off the earth.

Josh has been in our orbit going back to when he was 11 years old and an avid and daily listener of The Dan Valenti Show on WBRK radio. The lad was a political junkie. We would run into Josh every now and then on North Street and greatly enjoyed our chats with this energetic, bright boy with an unlimited future.

The boy became a young man, and in the summer of 2011, THE PLANET hired Josh as our baseball reporter covering the Pittsfield Colonials. In doing so, we help the lad fulfill his dream of being a scribe covering professional ball. He knew the game and its subtleties, and we would engage in vigorous debates and second guessing. Should he have put on a play? Why did he sacrifice? Did he leave him in too long?

Our interactions as his publisher and editor brought into sharp focus to tremendous upside of that kid. We got to know him, and we were made better for it. “A surefire future mayor of Pittsfield,” we used to kid him.

Since then, we have followed his growth from a distance, mainly on social media. He met, he married, he “settled down” into the role of loving husband, and he became a dad seven weeks ago, documenting the process on Facebook along its unsuspecting way.

We all exist on borrowed time, from the moment of conception. Death gets its price for what life buys us. Intellectually we grasp this finality, but — as we do with all absolutes in a relativistic world and as an act of self-preservation — we run from the feelings and emotions of this reality. The inner psychic clock that ticks does so relentlessly, silent and invisible. It hovers over ad under our every waking and unawakened moment, barely beyond the groping borderline of our awareness. We are all on the Cross, our arms outstretched on the druid wood (from Lowell).

When death arrives to a loved one, the ticking clock reigns in the realm of Truth as a loud chiming. In our shock and grief, perhaps it’s one of the few times we perceive life directly — as it is and not as we wish it. As poet John Donne wrote centuries ago, “Never send for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” He was right. Every person’s death is a diminishment of our denial, driving home the certainly of life’s transient nature.

We are born to die.

Josh Cutler, a young man I have known for most of his life, woke up Saturday a widower. His seven-weeks-old baby will never know his mother. Josh, who lost his father a month ago, now has to deal with this.

How does one do it? We’re guessing by his initial reactions that, as “they” like to say, it “hasn’t sunk in yet.” That phrase, too, is a mask. Underneath it lies the sinking realization.

It ALWAYS sinks in, instantly. What takes time is the coming to terms, the grieving process that resembles a set of fingerprints, a shared aspect of life that is alike for no two people.

We wish we could pass the magic wand and make the experience go away, for Josh Cutler, for everyone.

We can’t. We stand helpless like so many others who would love to get Josh through it.

We can’t. He must find his own way, but we do know one thing that works.

If there is one time the heart must rule the head, it’s when the heart is breaking.

The way through overwhelming grief is down the middle,  straight through it. In an odd manner, perhaps the restrictions on hugs and proximity in this time of pandemic can be an aid in disguise, forcing those dealing with the sudden loss of a loved one into a direct inner confrontation that would otherwise be delayed. The feelings will be up and down, mostly down, experienced doubtfully the fullness of faith’s acceptance. It’s a tough roller-coaster to ride.

What do you do with those wavering feelings?

Feel them.

Fortunately, Josh has a strong support group of family, friends, and loved ones. We will all in ways large and small help him.

Rest in Peace, Jessica.

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“Thy brother Death came, and cried. Wouldst thou for me?” — Percy Shelley, from his poem “To Night.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

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