Our local hospital put the word out on social media: There were no COVID-19 patients on any floor.
It seemed like a big deal. Not that long ago, the place was overrun with the 21st century plague. The most recent viral wave had crested and receded, leaving wreckage in its wake but slipping away into the past, where all horrors are remembered horrors.
At 9 p.m. Central time on Saturday nights, NBC airs reruns of “Saturday Night Live” broadcasts. A recent repeat was from the lull following the first wave of COVID.
It was surreal because I’d forgotten what it’d been like during the early days of lockdown. The cast reminisced about things that’d happened just a few months earlier in their reality but two years ago in ours.
They talked about cheering and banging pots and pans during shift change at hospitals to honor frontline doctors and nurses. I don’t live close enough to the hospital to do that, but I was in lockdown and watched a heck of a lot of TV in those days and saw the eerie celebrations playing out night after night.
I also remembered the daily news conferences, when once loved and now reviled figures reassured and scared us in equal measure.
While driving to work shortly after lockdown, I had a blinding flash of insight into the nature of absurdity. That was before the nation had become divided over the usefulness of vaccinations, when the only defense against the illness was staying away from other people, but there I was, being forced to spend my days in close contact with potential carriers, and to be fair, they had no choice but to breathe my air.
We were armed with cloth masks, disinfectants and open windows for cross ventilation. The whole affair was sketchy at best. It’d seem the rules of the world had changed in ways that weren’t good for anybody.
Now, we have a break, and there’s a chance COVID-19 won’t resurface. I’ve read about another variant, but let’s pretend for now that it’s over, really over. Let’s say you and I rode our ways around and through the waves, and they didn’t crash on top of us with ultimate finality.
I don’t feel too much like celebrating. If it’s over, then all I’ve got to mark the moment is a loud and long exhale and a shake of the head. That was a dark ride, and I feel anything but exhilarated.
Perhaps you’re different and feel like letting out a few stout-hearted “Whoops!” I don’t begrudge you. A part of me would like to join in, but I don’t have the energy.
With Sept. 11, 2001, we have a date each year to mark the terrible event. With COVID and the memories we share, we don’t have a specific date to unite us in future years. Maybe that’s a good thing that will allow these strange days to warp and blend and almost slip away in the ocean of time.
I assume people will write the histories of our experiences and document the troubles we went through together and the many arguments that separated us as both Americans and human beings.
Will they make movies with families members fighting over the kitchen table about masks and vaccinations? Or will they decide to leave that stuff in the past?
I don’t know, but if COVID actually is in the past, that’s exactly where I want it to stay.
