When Life Returns To Normal
By: Judith Liebaert
Tags: Coronavirus, Stay At Home, Family, Covid 19, Death And Dying

April 23, 2020

Image by Gennaro Leonardi from Pixabay

My social media feeds are filling up with people sharing the first thing they’re going to do when life returns to normal. My online friends and acquaintances want to go shopping with no purpose again. They want to get a massage or a pedicure. They want to have cocktails in a bar with friends, or go out to dinner.

Some want to party and get drunk. Some want to go to church. Others can’t wait for the kids to get back to school. Many just want to get out of the house and go wherever they damn well please, when they damn well please, and for however long they damn well please.

I can honestly say I hadn’t given much thought to this, because I’m resigned to the fact that we are in this for the long haul. I know I’m in for longer than many others because my husband belongs to four high risk categories—five if you include age. Until there is effective treatment and a vaccine, we will be staying home.

We won’t risk eating in a restaurant, something we did at least a few times a week until last month. We won’t be going to see movies when theaters open, we won’t be dropping into the local pub to share a brew with our friends.

I’m probably going to have to learn to cut my husband’s hair, something I swore I would never, ever do. Mine will grow and I’ll just keep wrapping it in a messy, salt and pepper bun.

I won’t enjoy Monday afternoons painting with others at my friend’s art studio. I won’t be going to my writers’ group on Tuesdays. Neither has room for six-foot distancing and I’ll have no way of knowing if my friends there have been exposed to the virus elsewhere.

But like I said, I hadn’t given much thought to all of that, until I started writing this. The only thing I think of, even though I try not to think about it because of the panic that squeezes my chest, is seeing my loved ones again.

The first thing I want to do the second it’s safe, is hug my children and grandchildren. I want to hold them to my heart and not have to let go until they say, “Okay Mom, it’s alright. It’s okay, Grandma, we’re still here.”

I want to hug my dearest friends, and say, “We survived. We’re still alive.”

Three days ago one of my two best friends from high school died. It wasn’t the virus. That doesn’t matter, he’s gone.

I’d been in Florida for the winter when the first confirmed cases started showing up in the U.S. I wasn’t able to see Brian when I arrived home in March. He had some art supplies for me; he was sure I’d like them. I knew I would. “We’ll get together for lunch as soon as this is all over,” I said.

That lunch is never going to happen. I’m never going to see Brian again.

I haven’t seen my older daughters and their children since just after Thanksgiving, our usual homecoming reunion forestalled. My youngest lives in one of the worst viral outbreak spots in the country. I haven’t seen her in almost two years. She was supposed to visit home in June.

If there were some kind of magic, some deal I could make with devil or angel to spare my loved ones and all I had to do was stay inside these four walls for the rest of my days, I’d sign in a second.

Just let me hold them all again when it’s over. That’s all I want to do.