One year into a pandemic

 

As the song says “where were you one year ago”

It's been one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic and countries started to go into full lockdown. 

Things many of us took for granted—like hugging our family or hosting a kid's birthday party—would eventually fall into the category of unsafe activities.

Social distancing, regular hand washing and masking up became the norm.

 

One year ago, I was jobless (having been just let go a week before) and I was staying at home for the first time in my adult life except for maternity leave.  I was sleeping a lot, cooking and cleaning.  We were playing games, reading books, doing puzzles, trying to make the time pass. 

 

People were hurrying to the grocery stores to stock up on toilet paper, bread and the essentials, most stores sold out of TP really fast and people were in a panic.
We then heard of 25 plus cases per day and the province went into a lock down, no one could visit with parents, grandparents, siblings or friends- IT WAS HARD.  Places of worship were closed, no non essential shopping was allowed, (hello amazon), schools were closed, weddings were cancelled, funerals were just allowed a max of 20 people all social distancing.

 

For the first time we heard Social distancing, stay back 6 ft from the person in front of you, wear a mask, any flu like symptoms call 811 to be tested.  It was so hard to live thru a pandemic with no hope of it ending in sight. 

 

But here we are a year later and we have all settled into the routine, not everyone is enjoying staying home, or wearing a mask, not having big parties but there has been a closeness amongst marriages, families that live in the same house have spent more time together then ever before.

Covid has cancelled a lot of things but it has not cancelled Love.