COVID hardship brings family together
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — There he was. Penn State Senior Aziz Salamy was stuck: in an empty room in an empty apartment in an empty college town. A state away, his eldest sister, an immunocompromised nurse, lay sick in bed stricken with COVID-19.
Salamy’s eldest sister was the first in his family to contract the virus, the rest followed soon after. Out of three sisters, two nephews, one niece, and a brother-in-law in Ohio; and a father and stepmother in Pennsylvania, only Salamy and his brother-in-law escaped COVID.
As Salamy sat alone in that room, left with the hardship of nearly every family member having COVID — all he could feel was closer to those who mattered most.
“Being quarantined has given us the opportunity to FaceTime more, Zoom more . . . talk more,” Salamy said.
The Salamy family was always a close-knit group, but they slowly began drifting apart years went by and some began to start families of their own.
With the onset of the pandemic though, the family has gone from only talking around two times a week nearly five. The group has begun virtual family game nights, giving Salamy’s father more time with his grandchildren.
Despite how much quarantine has brought the family together, it has also weighed heavily on all of them.
Salamy took two weeks off work to care for his stepmother, but as she got better — all he could do was hope for the best for his immunocompromised eldest sister.
While the family all got COVID coincidentally around the same time, the sister is still fighting the virus some seven weeks later. This extended battle is likely due to her immunocompromised status, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The longer she has it, the more fear comes with it,” Salamy said. “She’s pretty much bed- ridden.”
The two lost their mother when Salamy was very young, which a reason why her condition worries him.
“It’s scary. I lost my mother, and my oldest sister was like a mother figure to me,” Salamy said. “It something that I try not to think about too much because if I do . . . it really cripples me as a person.”
The adversities of the pandemic have taken a toll on Salamy’s social and school life.
“Worrying about: ‘Am I going to get covid? Is my sister doing ok right now?’ . . . It makes studying pretty difficult,” Salamy said.
He said he’s suffered more anxiety attacks since the pandemic began, and feels it’s taken a toll on his overall mental health.
Now it seems to him that being alone is safer than anything else.
Salamy spent nearly nine months isolated in his apartment, as his roommates all had internships or returned home for quarantine. His childhood friend and former roommate, Brett Fields, finds that this combined with the pandemic has burdened Salamy.
“The pandemic has made him a bit more depressed,” Fields said, adding that Salamy “doesn’t like living alone” and “needs people.”
Another childhood friend, Nkosi Govere, noticed Salamy seems more ecstatic now whenever he gets the chance to talk with friends.
With all the hardship the pandemic has caused, Salamy has recently started seeing a counselor, and emphasized his focus on the good rather than the bad.
“I think of my family and their well-being a lot more now,” Salamy said. “We just try to see the glass half full.”
