Advancing Anxiety

It’s been a while. A long while. It seems that my last post was our 2020 Christmas letter! I promised then to post regularly but I have clearly not kept that promise. I did post a lot during our cruise around South America (January and February), although I never did manage to write about the last few ports. That cruise was a wonderful, two-month long celebration of our 25th anniversary. There were times when we weren’t sure that we would even make it to 20.

Why am I posting now, you might ask? We had managed to get home from our 2020 trip just before the first lockdown here. That wasn’t too much of a hardship for us because when we aren’t traveling, we’re essentially home bodies. We go to church every Sunday, we go grocery shopping, eat out too much, and occasionally, go for a walk at our local mall. I have three monthly tea dates, but otherwise, we like being home and together. Starting on March 13, 2020, we wore masks, did church remotely, lined up to enter the grocery store with its limited capacity, cancelled all my tea dates. The mall is closed. The cruise line cancelled the cruise we wanted to take later in 2020. We’ve eaten out three times since we got home.

As the pandemic raged around us, I found myself becoming anxious. Some of you will know this, but for the rest, seven years ago, I was hospitalized. I was dizzy, incoherent, unable to walk without falling and had a host of other symptoms. This information comes from my husband because I have no memory of the week before he called an ambulance or the rest of that month. I was in ICU. I am still learning of the impact that seeing me on a ventilator had on my family. I don’t want to repeat the experience for them or for me.

At times, I wanted to enter the vaccination debate here, but as that worsened and as I learned that some of my family and friends are among the anti-vaxxers, I resisted the urge because I figured I would lose my cool. Eventually, I just stopped writing. Then, one of the bloggers I follow told us that she had tested positive for the Delta variant. This woman has been so vigilant, so compliant with public health guidelines; she’s done everything right and it didn’t stop this insidious thing from attacking her.

My anxiety has ramped up to near paranoia levels. I don’t want to leave my home. I don’t want to see anybody. I still do groceries because I don’t think it would be fair to send my husband out there if I won’t go. Many of my friends have everything delivered. Perhaps that’s next. But right now I have to get this down; we could have stopped this thing in its tracks as soon as the vaccines became available. It would have taken strong leadership, enforcement of the things we were told to do, and the exercise of human willpower. Each of us could have helped. Instead, we have more hospitals in crisis, essential health care professionals exhausted, small businesses closing forever, the travel industry crippled and millions of people feeling the pain of loss.

I’m anxious, I’m angry and I’m a little bit frightened. The post has helped me put words on my feelings. Life will go on. We may or may not get sick. We didn’t have colds last winter, I think because of masking. My guess is that we’ll have another winter to to test that hypothesis.

Another reason that I haven’t posted is that I have been somewhat preoccupied with my other writing. After 35 years of writing “science” at work, my retirement project was to write another great Canadian novel. I’ve had the idea for years, and it took some serious thinking time to put some detail on it. Then the writing began. It will continue. Hopefully so will the blog posts. One of the other bloggers I follow writes several short post during the day, I suspect whenever the muse strikes him. Maybe I should try that.

I must confess that before the latest surge began, we conferred with our niece, herself an essential health care worker, to decide whether it was safe for us to visit and meet our 11-month old great niece. Her daddy is a paramedic, clearly an essential worker, and he may have been in on the decision. However the decision was made, we went on a road trip; they live about an hour and a half away from us. It was the first time in 17 months. Here she is.

Hannah and me. She’s about to take a selfie!

Thanks for hanging in, folks.

Love, gail

• COVID 19
• faith
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