This past Christmas was strange to say the least. There were no visiting relatives. No drinks with old friends or finding out who from primary school had gotten good looking in the pub on Christmas Eve after the cursory trip to Mass. The fear of accidentally killing your Granny was too great for most of us to consider a cheeky late evening get together (Read: house party). Though a fair few people I know did and regret it now.
I would be lying if I said I did not secretly enjoy the peacefulness of it all. I had been languishing in a pit of isolation related despair before and after the week of the 25th of December. But it lifted for the big week itself. The lack of expectation was an unexpected positive. Christmas can be a lot. Having no routine in the place of hectic gatherings where highly strung aunts and uncles fought over the TV remote (while really fighting over some childhood slight) was not the worst thing in the world. So many had it so much worse than me. I am all too aware of that.
My mother and her brothers and sisters had their first Christmas where they could not see each other nor their mother. Granny became seriously ill the previous Christmas day and ended up in intensive care. Looking back, with all the knowledge we have now, she had almost all the symptoms of covid-19. Gran went into hospital on the 26th of December and stayed there until the middle of February. She then moved into a nursing home. Her dementia had progressed rapidly when she was ill, and it was no longer safe for her to live at home without 24-hour care. Granny, thankfully, is in a happy place. She has no concept of what is going on in the world outside her head. She lives in the memories of better times. It is my mother and the rest of her children who are struggling.
Living through a pandemic is hard. I think sometimes people feel like because they are not struggling as much as others, they cannot say that. But unless you are a multimillionaire or billionaire, it is hard. Going to college online is difficult. Not seeing friends and family is painful. Staring at a screen all day is mind numbing. The amount of people alive who lived through a pandemic before this one are few and far between. I usually want to ground to swallow me when someone uses the word “unprecedented”. But if we are being honest, it is the only word we have to describe the last few months. In the future we will categorise all this as a grim but abstract blip in the past, which humans unfortunately seem prone to do with all horrific events after enough time passes. But right now, we are living it. While the seems like the end could soon be in sight, as the number of people vaccinated continues to increase daily, it is important to remember the gravity of the situation at hand. Look after yourself. It is the only one you have.
