The Things I Wasn’t Ready for: Covid-19
It’s a Friday night shift and I’m preparing for my first round of deliveries. I’ll be bringing dinners to the residents of the senior living home that I once waitressed in. Now as a delivery girl, I walk behind a plastic shield and a filtered mask, scurrying off as soon as I knock and leave meals by each door so as not to risk a single second of close contact. I’m greeted by a few muffled Hello’s or Thank you’s as I walk off. I could manage this. Sure, it’s fewer hours of pay than it was waitressing, but it’s a small sacrifice.
What’s not such a small sacrifice is watching engraved names on doors become taped-up pieces of paper with the word vacant written on them. What hasn’t been so easy is hearing fewer and fewer greetings or even stirs from the doors as the months dragged on. What hasn’t been so easy is seeing 3 different In memory of’s in the lobby within one week. What hasn’t been so easy is hearing that Mr. Johnson, who put together a fundraiser last year to help our staff with college expenses each year, no longer has a wife. I’ll be left with the memory of how he kept his hand over hers every night at dinner last year. He’ll be left wondering when it’ll be his turn.
It’s a Friday night and I’m shielded by the safety of my room watching a TV show that’s been on for years. My immediate thought upon seeing the characters interact is “How can they all be so close together without masks?” It’s become more and more frequent that I catch myself in these sillier and rather trivial thoughts. But these are easy, survivable moments.
Others have not been so lucky. So for now, I’ll keep my eyes down and thank the universe that I was lucky enough to have only ever been a witness.
