COVID AND THE OLD WOMAN

 

COVID had been really hard on the old woman. So hard she no longer felt like an actual person. She felt as though she were some kind of wraith floating around her home. Sometimes when she saw herself in the mirror, she was so surprised it took her a few seconds and sometimes more to figure out who was actually being reflected back. More and more she thought perhaps her life had ended and no one had told her she no longer existed.

          It hadn’t been like that before COVID. True, she was a widow, but her husband had passed away a decade before and while that had been extremely difficult since they were so close and did everything together, she had learned to adjust, to build a new life for herself. She had even learned to enjoy her life post husband and had been looking forward to many more years of exploring the world as well as the many friendships she’d made in his absence.

And even though her favorite saying after her husband’s death had been, “one and done,” she had managed to become very good friends with a man her age. He wasn’t bad looking for an old guy and still had all his hair, as well as a snowy white mustache and beard. He'd also managed to keep his weight down and had kept his figure even though six-pack abs were a thing of the past. They’d had lots of fun together, travelling, exploring, and every now and then some delightful sex. They hadn’t talked about living together although now, after months of being alone, she would have welcomed his presence in her home.

          When COVID first came on the news, it hadn’t seemed as though it would be such a big deal. Then came the closures. No more exercise classes. No more swimming. No more golf. No more eating in restaurants with friends. No more having people over for cocktails and dinner. No more visiting with neighbors while working in the garden. No more social life of any kind. Even grocery shopping became something to avoid. Instead, she ordered what she needed and or wanted on line and then had it delivered. Even then, she was careful to wear gloves and swab each and every item that came out of the bags. It was terrifying to think one little teeny-tiny germ she couldn’t even begin to see with a magnifying glass could render her ill, in the hospital, on a ventilator and dead.

          Of course, the world found ways in which she could adapt. Often, she wondered how anyone would have managed without television and the internet. There were undoubtedly thousands of people who couldn’t have used a computer, found information on the internet or participated in Zoom meetings. Fortunately, she wasn’t a total idiot, so she was able to participate as much or as little as she wished in the various offerings received in her email most days. Unfortunately, it also allowed her to do what was now being called doomscrolling. If she didn’t watch the news, she could always go online and find as much negative information as she could absorb at one time.

          It would have been much better if she'd had children, but she and her husband hadn’t wanted to bring any children into such a world even before the pandemic had turned everything upside down. She wondered sometimes what he would have thought of all this. Even when they were young, the world and life as they knew it seemed to be on a downward spiral. Still, having a child or children and grandchildren who would have called on a regular basis to check up on her would have been a huge blessing. She wouldn’t have felt so alone.

          True, she had friends, but her friends had lives of their own and while they checked in now and then, it wasn’t like they held daily conversations or zoom talks. She wasn’t even sure why she bothered to keep her cell phone charged. When it did ring, it was usually a wrong number or some kind of sales call. Maybe once a week, it was a friend checking in. In the beginning, she called all her friends on a regular basis, and her special guy every day.

Unfortunately, the longer COVID continued, the less she wanted to reach out, especially after several of them living in apartments in senior facilities caught COVID and died. The first one had been her special male friend and she found herself mourning him more than any of the others, but she did mourn them all. Her social circle had diminished at an alarming rate, so there were fewer phone calls to make or receive.

          Sometimes when she felt particularly wraithful, she thought perhaps it would be best to dig out her husband’s pain medication which she’d shoved to the back of the closet. After so many years, she didn’t know if it would be any good, but it would at least allow her to choose to become a real wraith. She wondered if an actual wraith felt the things she felt; loneliness, despair, misery, sadness, depression. Some days it was so hard to just get out of bed.

          Now, there was a vaccine. She could sign up to get the inoculation. They were saying that in a few months, for sure by the end of summer, life could return to normal. But, seriously, what would normal be after such a pandemic, after so many deaths, after so much loss? She had no idea and wasn’t really looking forward to getting the shots or finding out what the future would bring.

She was tired, so tired, and each day made her feel more and more like a wraith drifting from room to room of her home. She had come to the conclusion that if the absence of physical and social contact didn’t cease soon, one morning her physical body wouldn’t rise from its bed. Instead, she would wake as a true wraith and continue to glide through all the rooms of her home until the neighbors or someone realized that while she hadn't become infected, she still had become a COVID victim.