Can you imagine that during our lifetime we are actually LIVING OUT what would come down as one of the most significant fact in world history?
A pandemic is not a regular occurrence. The last time we had the deadliest flu pandemic was in 1918 during the Spanish Flu. Here are a few quick and interesting facts about influenza in the past century.
One hundred and two years on, we are faced with another deadly pandemic. Browsing on last night, I saw a very few people that have survived both pandemic, can you even imagine that? There is a Maria Branyas from Spain, she is 113 years old and survived CoViD. Read her story HERE. At 108, Phil Corio is believed to be the oldest survivor here from New Mexico, USA. In the UK, a 106-year old lady is their oldest survivor after three weeks in hospital with CoViD. These are just few of our elderly all over the world who survived CoViD and the Spanish Flu as well in their lifetime.
I have mentioned this to our Little Man once, telling him that one day when he gets to have his own kids they would ask him about the CoViD-19 in 2020, how would he respond? He aptly answered this way “This is the virus from China, made all of us stay home for so long so we will be safe from it. I did not have to go to school but instead do classes online. It was both sad and exciting for me.”
In 20 years, God-forbidding I am still well and alive, my son would be 30 years old and hopefully thinking of having a family if he does not have one yet. Their generation would be talking about what they can remember of the CoVid-19 era of 2020. Some of them would be sharing their experiences with distance learning and the evolution of ZOOM online classes. My son might mention and fondly remember his Zoom Birthday Party. Still some would recall how they were not able to march and receive their diploma or certificate of completion the traditional way as most schools have cancelled their graduation or moving up ceremony. Some might share how they did virtual presentation, or a drive-thru graduation and still some did the oddest arrangements like marching up a set-up stage to pick up your own certificate and face an empty hall only to smile at the camera focused on them.
Zoom meetings have become a fad. It has even taken over schools, conferences, TV shows, news outfits and even church gatherings like Bible Studies. Live streaming and Facebook live will also come down our history books for streaming concerts, church worship services, hour-long press conferences by government officials. etc.
If I'd be blessed to have a grandchild in the future, I might even take her with me for a long walk and start telling how her dad survived being at home for three months on his own with neither play dates nor basketball games. How we would bake all sort of things from Facebook just to kill time. How her dad felt so lonely and isolated at the very start and how he coped. I think I will always share my son's essay with my grandchild/children and still be as proud as I am now of his accomplishment during this pandemic.
I can picture us doing some gardening in the backyard with the grand kids, while I could be relating the story of how this minuscule virus, or microscopic to be exact, called Coronavirus invaded our normal way of living and suddenly paralyzed the whole world forcing us all to stay home, pause from whatever we were doing and just wait on. And how this pause have given most of us an opportunity to slow down, rest and be able to spend more quality time with family. I will definitely pinch in that this was God's way of teaching us how to "take time to smell the flowers" and spend some time with the Lord as well.
"We urge you, brothers and sisters..to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life." - PAUL in 1 Thessalonians 4:10-11
It's only been three months to this pandemic and a lot have changed. Maybe I can make jokes and funny stories about wearing mask and social distancing too, but make it a teaching moment too about how to be constantly clean personally (to the point of being an OCD). Will we ever find ourselves running out of gloves and hand sanitizer in the market place (stores or online) in the future? Or should I be asking what kind of virus could we be battling then? O, I will be so glad to be retired by that time (and I hope they won't call back retired nurses then and we would have learned a lot more from this present day experience.)
I can also tuck my dear grandson in to bed as he sleeps over with GrandMa and GrandPa for the weekend and tell him about my experience as a healthcare professional dealing with the elderly population during this pandemic. They are not the fun stories but sure are heart warming and stories we can learn a lot about. I can tell him stories of elderly couples between glass windows waving at each other; family members singing "Happy Birthday" just outside their mom's/dad's window; or a grandchild knocking on grandparents' window to show them his/her diploma and all they can do on the other side is shed a tear or two in joy and in despair. I am not sure how to mention those countless lives taken away by this Coronavirus, but maybe I will relate the stories of my personal friends and families that either died or survived from it. They will be very personal stories, hard to tell but true to life ones.
I think I would also share the creativity that came out of this CoViD-19 era. Lots of people take on different forms and styles of facial cloth coverings, from personalized to different sizes, colors and designs. Resourcefulness from company owners that were not able to produce their primary product but instead produced something to help out the government. For example are those breweries that produced hand sanitizers from their by product or those car manufacturing that made and put together ventilators to add up to the supply chain. These are some of the amazing things that I think and hope would come down to be part of our history during this pandemic. Ingenuity was part of the pandemic too. Some of our top pharmaceutical companies worked together to come up with the best testing kits and machines in order to deliver the fastest and most accurate results. Researchers have also worked so hard to study and produce some form of treatment for CoViD-19. And now as I write this blog, they are acting fast and will soon be testing the vaccine against Coronavirus in humans with hopes of offering the cure before the end of 2020.
Would blogs like this still be in existence in two decades? Would they even know what a blog is or would this be a thing of the past? (Maybe I should print copies of these and laminate it for them..thinking hard!) If so, I would be thrilled to open this up and read it aloud. That particular moment with my future grand kids would just be so exciting and memorable. It would feel like digging a time capsule two or three decades old and opening a box of memorabilia from this era. What could be in that time capsule? Maybe a face mask, a picture from My Little Man's zoom birthday party during this pandemic, a written copy of his most priced essay about Birthday Presents this school year of distance learning or maybe our family picture donning our Mickey Mouse face masks! That would be really thrilling to see and be able to look at the little kids' facial expressions followed by unending questions for GrandMa and GrandPa.
I think we are only half way through this and there will be more to experience, remember, recall and write about so that when the time comes we can tell our grandchildren how we have lived and survived one of the deadliest pandemic in the history of modern mankind.
What will you remember from your experience during this time of CoViD-19? What can you tell your grand kids in the future? What good memories from the pandemic will you be able to share with them? How can you make something good out of this extraordinary experience now when you look back in twenty, thirty or more years?
Let us live our present life now with joy in the midst of this crisis going on left and right. Let us take part of this 'history in the making' and remember every bit of this life in time of CoViD. We can then be proud of our experiences and grateful to our Lord GOD for getting us through the hardest year of our lives...so far.
/DEEend/
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