Did I do the Right Thing

With this damned pandemic hitting in mid March, my wife and I went into isolation in our basement apartment. It was on a doctor’s recommendation because of the new novel Coronavirus disease which has been sweeping the globe causing many deaths.

On that day in March, now closing in on two months, I stopped hugging and kissing my children, and started staying 6 feet or more away from them, and them from me. Not quite two months yet, but it has forever changed my life and my character.

I have always lovingly touched, kissed and hugged my children and their children. It’s who I am. Not just as a turn of a phrase either. It is literally, physically and emotionally, mentally and spiritually Larry Bowers. That aspect of me IS me. To lose it for any amount of time is almost worse than death. Damn the Coronavirus and whoever, whatever, or wherever it came from. To have taken almost two full months of love from many of us “older” people is an affront to our being. And, it is not even over yet. Who knows when that will be?

The numbers of dead in this country don’t paint a hopeful outlook. Over seventy thousand dead…..and still going. In only two months….seventy thousand. Oh God. Those families, I’m so very sad, so sorry. I cry every night. I pray again for the first time in years.

I realize what the virologists and specialists say is true. I’ve read the descriptions of what the disease does, and I’ve seen the film clips. I know it’s for our own good. We’ll get through this…they say. When this is behind us ….they say. When it’s safe to physically able to show our love to our loved ones again….what will we do?

I see notes and posts on social media from people who are my age, or nearly so…who say they have continued to be with their families and have continued to be a loving family unit, and they aren’t dead yet. It makes me wonder: did I do the right thing? Have I given up two months, which has changed me both physically and mentally, for nothing? When and if I can hold my babies again, will I go into it without a single thought about it…or will I be timid?

The torturers from hell couldn’t have devised a more sneaky, malodorous painful method of punishment than this for a person like me.