The Month of May's Promise: Our A&C Editor Reflects on Her Senior Year's End
It was a rarity for visitors to enter Room 3116 in O’Shea Hall and neglect to mention the rainbow donkey piñata perched near the door.
Whenever my roommates and I had guests over for group project meetings, Bachelor viewing parties, or Saturday night “pre-games” to Mahoney’s, we’d always receive innumerable compliments on the piñata. “It’s just so fun!” People would gush. Often, they’d inquire, “What’s inside?” And as far anyone knew, the answer was: nothing.
But there was something inside — actually, there were a lot of things. About a week into our fall semester of our senior year at Marist, my roommate Brie and I decided that we’d stuff the piñata with mementos of senior year. Parking tickets from our Labor Day trip to the Jersey Shore, fortune cookies, cheap plastic sunglasses from St. Patrick’s Day festivities, goodies from R.A. programs and more all found their way inside. We kept it a secret from our other two roommates, Sophia and Kristina, and friends so we could smash it during Senior Week in May and surprise everyone when a splattering of senior year memorabilia spilled out.
I used to dream about the arrival of May fervently and frequently. It was the world I escaped to when my eyes blurred from staring at my computer screen for too long, writing an article for my final journalism course. I thought about it on the L-train, during my commute to and from my internship in Chelsea, Manhattan. I pondered it nearly every time I drove across campus, and wondered how many more times I’d see the sun melt into the Hudson River before my college years came to a grinding halt on May 23, 2020.
Maybe I was infatuated with May because it held some sort of a promise. I’d have everything figured out by then, wouldn’t I? A job lined up, a next step? It was an untouchable month. Until one day, it wasn’t.
Madison Vettorino and her roommates before moving out this spring. Source: Vettorino
I always anticipated an inevitable grief to accompany the final month of senior year. It was a month of celebration and of remembrance, of loss and of arrival. Yet nothing could dim my excitement of getting to flip my tassel from one side of my graduation cap to the other in front of my parents. As a first generation college student, walking across that stage in front of my family was the biggest dream of mine. I still recall being in middle school and my mother lecturing me on all the opportunities having a Bachelor’s degree would allow me to have.
Though our routines have largely become predictable, I keep surprising myself. When I think I am finally done cycling through the stages of grief and at long last settling on acceptance, an old feeling sneaks up on me again. And yet one poignant question keeps nagging me - am I even allowed to be upset about how senior year ended when there are people dying from this terrible illness?
I grappled with the idea of even writing this article for that reason precisely. Every time I catch myself, distressed, about the indefinite postponement of Commencement, or senior year ending so suddenly, a wave of disappointment hits me for even being upset. I feel guilty. Several of my extended family members have fallen ill to this terrible virus, and while I have been extremely fortunate to watch all of them recover, innumerable people cannot say the same. Is being upset about senior year ending selfish? Is it possible to hold space for both feelings? Can we mourn how college ended while also realizing that this is so much bigger than that, that others have lost so much more?
I think so. I think, if we refuse to give ourselves the right to acknowledge our own layered and complex feelings about loss - however big or small the loss may be - it will be impossible to heal. Being a human in 2020 means being able to mourn the “little” losses, like senior year ending prematurely, while realizing and acknowledging that others have tragically lost far, far more.
—
My roommates and I moved out in mid-March, during that week when the term ‘social distancing’ was just starting to become part of the national vernacular and before strict shelter-in-place orders were enacted. There was an ominous air, the sense that we’d better act fast and get our belongings out of our on-campus apartment sooner rather than later. We gathered from Connecticut and Massachusetts for one final celebration of our four years at Marist.
I was organizing some of my clothes in a suitcase when I heard one of my roommates, Sophia, dejectedly say, “I was hoping this ending would feel more like a beginning. But instead it just feels like an ending.”
I paused. It was impossible to argue with that.
—
Senior year evaporated. Disappeared. Completely vanished, like a ghost. I partially expect to be able to pick up in March 2020 when the pandemic ends. It’s hard to comprehend that these months are lost forever, with little tangible evidence they were ever here in the first place.
I laid in bed a moment longer than usual the morning I moved out. I peered at my now barren room, trying to commit the structure of the walls to memory. It felt like May, with all of its blankness. I hopped out of bed, and figured that was the most amount of closure I’d get.
I once thought the most treacherous ‘last’ is a slow one. A drawn-out one that you mentally prepare for, but cannot outrun. A date circled in red on the calendar. Now, I know the hardest ‘last’ is one that you do not know you’re living. It feels somehow stolen, something you didn’t get to properly bid adieu. I would have thanked my favorite professors in person if I knew. Sat on the plushy leather couches in Lowell Thomas one more time. Walked by the film lab in Donnelly, a place alive with so many memories. Lingered in front of Greystone for an extra moment or two. I grieve, I grieve, and it all remains gone.
This ending might always feel like an ending. We were not on-campus to see the snippy mornings of March lean into the long, languid nights of May. The Hudson River will only be memorialized in my memory, a sight no longer obtainable by peering out my apartment window. But with nearly 1.5 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and more being reported daily, I can think of worse things than not being able to spend all of spring on-campus, lounging riverside with friends, soaking up the last few moments of college.
And while senior year remains gone, some things are more present than ever. The bond between my roommates and I is one that I believe to be unseverable. My gratitude for the last four years (or 3.75 if we’re being technical) is omnipresent. Even though we can’t gush about our favorite songs in person, Kristina and I still do over text constantly. Sophia still sends us hilarious Tik Toks she’s made while in quarantine. Brie and I still update each other daily about our favorite books, TV shows, and clothes we can’t wait to buy at our favorite vintage store in Connecticut when this is over.
Madison Vettorino has worked with the Marist Circle since her freshman year, and has worked as our co-editor of the Arts & Culture section this past year. Source: Vettorino
Not a day passes without me thinking about how lucky we are to have each other.
Our final night on campus, prior to the day we moved out, we finally got around to smashing the piñata. We took turns holding Brie’s high school softball bat and swung until it crashed onto the floor. It held up, but finally let in. Everything spilled out — a colorful, conglomerate mess of candy and paper and chocolate coins and beaded necklaces and tiny liquor bottles of Baileys and Smirnoff and Fireball.
Brie looked at the mangled mess on the floor. Smiled at me and said, “I just thought there was more in there.”
There would have been. There should have been. But there was still enough.
We all picked up one of the tiny bottles of alcohol to clink and say cheers. “Make a speech!” Kristina said.
So I did. “Cheers to us,” I smiled. “We might not have had the maximum amount of time, but we sure did have the maximum amount of fun.”