The memes alone should be memorialized in any future coverage of this global phenomenon, as they are the modern “ring around the rosie” and other lullabies about death and disease we used to shake our heads at. Not anymore. Clearly humanity has always had a penchant for laughing at things that should make us shake in our boots. The emotional rollercoaster may do me in before the disease itself. One minute, anxiety over the billion “what ifs” – what if my job has to shut down? What if I get COVID-19? What if we run out of toilet paper? – inevitably leads to anger over things like inaction by our leaders and ridiculous hoarding practices by my fellow Americans (if you needed THAT much toilet paper, your problem isn’t the virus). That anger and frustration is only assuaged by stories of people helping one another.
Humanity really is a strange beast.
While I’m normally a homebody anyway, it’s amazing how much extra free time I seem to have thanks to this pandemic. Less travel time really adds up, and so far I’ve managed to add several extra chapters to my new book, clean and organize the entire house, marathon my way through no less than 4 different shows (5+ seasons each!) and even find time to be digitally social thanks to apps like Netflix Party, Amazon Alexa, and Facebook. My husband has even managed to completely finish painting all the miniature models that have accumulated in the office I just organized.
We decided this weekend we did want to get out, just not in a way that would lead to human interaction (hiss!), so we took a drive through the northern Georgia countryside. While we’ve heard of cases in Georgia, even as close as Fulton County, it didn’t really hit home until we saw quarantine tents around the entrance to the ER at a Cartersville hospital. I lightly laughed as we passed, thinking it was an overreaction, but the next day, we learned that that hospital was treating more than 40 people, several in critical condition. The patients were all parishioners of the same church who had contracted the virus at a church event in early March.
Please don’t take my blithe comments as an uncaring callousness; I feel as if I may be in a sort of social shock, my brain still not fully able to process the impact of the knowledge that a virus has more effectively shut down entire countries than 2 world wars did. And further, that it’s knocking on my town’s door. How do you mentally handle the scope of that concept?
The CDC has a museum in Atlanta, which we visited shortly after our arrival in 2017. One area is permanently dedicated to the memory of the 1918 Spanish Influenza, and the innumerable patients that died as a result of that pandemic. Two of its victims were my great, great grandparents, who died within a month of each other in their early 50s. I find myself wondering if things were scarier for them, or less formidable, given that they didn’t have quite the incessant 24/7 news coverage we’re “privileged” with today. What would they think of how we’re handling it now? Wherever you are, I pray you are well and that those you care about are safe too. It’s hard enough dealing with a global pandemic without worrying about your loved ones. To my brother, Michael, if you ever get to read this, we’re praying for you too, and miss you dearly. We never stop thinking of you.
-S
