My mother lives in a residence for the elderly; it is pleasant enough with many activities and amenities, but she hasn’t left her apartment in years. Call it a kind of paranoia of the elderly but she has been sequestering herself, in fact she has kept her distance even in emotional ways for as long as I’ve known her.

I had difficulty falling asleep last night due to my run-away thoughts. What if? What if? What if the aides who attend to her are carriers of the Corona Virus? Is this how my mother, now 102 years old, will reach the end? Has she already been exposed? Are the aides considered essential workers? Will her regular aide show up today?

My heart has been pounding for several years now, from stress. This virus is the other shoe that I was waiting to drop. The anxiety level just keeps peaking. Then we kind of go numb and feel lost.

When people enter my mother’s building they are greeted by a person with a thermometer and hand sanitizer. Is that enough? The building is closed to visitors as a precaution. The dining room has been shut down. Will that be enough?

I called and my mother answered in between bites of her egg salad. She sounded tired, her speech was slurred. No, the regular aide didn’t show. She was eating lunch with a new young aide. She added: “she is very nice.”

It took the memory of the past to meld with the present. “This is like the war. I lived through two wars. When they were over, there was not enough food. It affected our growth.”  My mother came from a family with four children. Six people had to share a little chicken.

She went on to talk about wartime, the lack of nylons (if you were dating a soldier he’d get you a pair at the PX). And the blackouts! Close your curtains!

When my mother was young she worked for the war department. She met my father at the Brooklyn Army Base. It was there that some soldiers would finally disembark. In coffins: That must have been a reality bite. But, somehow, life went on. People still married, had families, giving rise to us Baby Boomers. We were the post-war troops who marched into our lives never really experiencing the losses, sacrifices, fears and empty shelves of a wartime zeitgeist. WE were lucky, we were so lucky not to have a first-hand look at a Great Depression or live through the horrors of war. Maybe we were just plain spoiled. We gave rise to future generations who are at some beach on Spring Break, breaking the rules of social distancing, too self-involved to give a crap about the next guy. Or elderly person they might carry this virus to.

Though we might not end up selling apples or pencils on a street corner, there is a lesson here and it’s up to us to find it. We might go hungry: for the food that was once plentiful on well-stocked shelves, for everything we ever took for granted, for the feeling of security, of safety, of what once was.

That might never be again.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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