I'll admit something really terrible about myself: I used to love Covd-19. I mean, I didn't love the fact that people were getting sick and dying. That's horrible, and you would have to be a monster to love that. But I loved being able to stay home all day while I worked. I loved that I could wear sweats and no makeup all day and no one cared. I loved falling into the infinite dark hole of NetFlix and discovering shows I would have never even imagined existed. (You know...Tiger King, Indian Matchmaker, murder, baking, documentaries about everything under the sun, and the like). I loved spending all day with Hector, each at our end of the couch, balancing our laptops while still earning a living. My daily exercise regimen consisted of happily slogging through the Amazon, and I don't mean the river. I could go on and on about all of the introvertical pleasures the worldwide pandemic afforded me, but let's just say that I was content with the new lifestyle we all found ourselves in. It was all about ME.
But then, it became real. My covid 15 became a covid 50. There's a permanent dent in the couch where my lazy tush planted itself daily for the past 11 months. I couldn't go out with friends, or go to church, or travel to see my favorite little people. But worst of all, people I cared about caught the dreaded virus, and it became all too real.
In early December, my 84-year-old mother caught it. I don't know how, since she lived in the bubble of an assisted living home and could only have limited visitors, outside, with masks on, but she did. She was hospitalized for a few weeks, and then she got better. She went back home because she no longer had the virus. She got better, but she was worse, not better. She was really tired. Her memory was no longer in tact, and she didn't always make sense when we talked on the phone. In fact, our phone calls were now cut short because she didn't feel like talking anymore, a complete reversal of ALL of our former conversations. I couldn't visit her, but I could tell, she looked and acted as though she had aged another 10 years in the few months since I had seen her last. I was worried, but thought to myself, "She's okay. She beat the virus."
Anyway, she died a little before midnight last Friday night. I won't go on and on about the hospital stay, the collapsed lung, low oxygen levels, hypoxia, heart arrhythmia, etc., but I will say this: she died all alone. All by herself, in the hospital, with an indifferent nurse in the next room.
Of course, I am really sad that she died. But I'm more sad about how it happened. My deepest sadness comes from thinking that she was all alone and that she might have felt that no one cared. Did she know that we didn't go see her because we weren't allowed to? I'm praying that she did. I believe she was close enough to God to know that He cared and that her family cared, even though we hadn't gone to see her.
My sister and I didn't have the luxury of sitting at her bedside, telling her goodbye and that we loved her as she slipped from this life into the next. That's what Covid does. It robs us of togetherness--whether we're together engaged in living or dying.
So although I got to spend a lot of time basking in the idleness of a me-centered Covid, I lost the opportunity to be where it mattered most when it mattered most. I'm not sure if/when I'll get over this. I suppose in time, my heart will heal and I'll reflect upon this experience with some sort of gratitude, but for now, it just hurts.
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| My mom, circa 1952. |
