The old adage “you can never go home again” is eerie in the age of COVID. A time of fear, illness and even death. It is a time for reflection and worry.
I have lived away from what we have affectionately referred to as home-home. Not the home in which I currently live nor any of those varied apartment stops along the way, but the home in which I grew up. It wasn’t meant to be a cute name just a way to avoid miscommunication. I’m going home. I mean home-home, my Cape Breton home. And this was said every summer since we lived away. We have never stopped referring to it as our home despite not living there for 20 years or so. Prior to COVID, it was understood we would be going home-home every summer. At first it was my sister and I for several years and then later one, then two, then three and then four children and a husband who came too if he could get away. It has always been there. School starts in September, Christmas is in December and we go home-home in the summer.
So when COVID hit and the world eventually started to close in, I did not decide not to go home. I lived in some sort of state of denial. I didn’t say we would go as the world said we should not, but I didn’t say we wouldn’t go either. The children asked many times if we would be going or when we would be going and I prepared them for the possibility that we might not. But yet, I didn’t decide then and there that we wouldn’t go; we just didn’t. Now not making a decision can have the same results as making a definitive one, but as a coping mechanism this worked well for me. The end of June came and in an anti-climatic way school let out for the summer. July came and went and here we were. August arrived. We would surely be on the road by now and yet here we were. Living every day as best we could. Walking and avoiding people, working and playing. Calling home and lamenting about the loss of the good times and yet seven months later I still have not made a decision to not go.
And then in the fall my mother had a terrible car accident. We thought we had lost her. We waited helplessly here to understand both what had happened and how she and my father were doing. In normal times, my sisters and I would have flown to be there with her and our father to provide support, to worry, to make food and simply just be. Covid has us rooted to our separate spots.
The rehabilitation for our mom has been slow and we feel frustrated and angry and helpless so far away. We know it is far worse there to help during what was already a difficult time, but being away breeds a maddening restlessness. I can feel the worry scratching at my mind all day. I’m uneasy and irritable. The urge to start heading east is strong. We have discussed who could go and how they could go but for now, we stay rooted. And so we call , encourage and attempt to problem solve long distance. We Face Time and celebrate holidays and special days through the computer. It is not the same. The children want to see their grandparents and the lost time with the grandchildren is painful to hear in the voices of my parents.
I have heard people say dismissively they are “so over COVID”. It’s a funny statement. It sounds trivial but I do understand the sentiment to a degree. I, however, am “not over COVID” so much as I am so very angry at it. I suppose this makes as much sense as stating one is tired of it. I am but one person in a world of sad cases who may not get home. What difference does it make that I am angry at a virus with no heart, or mind or feelings I can hurt with my slinging of slurs and swear words. I know this but I am angry for the fear it has caused, the lives lost and hurt. I am angry that it has taken this time away from both my parents and my children. I am also angry at what it may take from us yet.