Many adults think the reckless behavior of young people is a reflection of their assumption that they will live forever. When I was young, I was guilty of a fair amount of recklessness, but I don’t remember ever thinking I was indestructible, that I’d live forever. Not even in an abstract sense, much less literal.
The disruption caused by COVID is robbing most of us of the social interactions that add richness to our lives. For young people, this will likely be a temporary interruption in their emotional development. Once the pandemic is behind us, life will go back to almost normal and their social growth will pick up where it left off. For older people, especially seniors, it may not be that easy.
After my sister’s husband died, she and I decided to take a trip together each fall to places we selected together. The first year, we went to Puglia, Italy and enjoyed it immensely. The second year, we didn’t go on a trip because my husband had knee replacement surgery. In addition to wanting to help him with his recovery, I had been counting on him to take care of our senior cats while I would be away. The third year, my sister and I went out West with a focus on visiting Sedona and several National Parks.
Year four was supposed to be Portugal. Instead, we got to sequester at home because of COVID. As it turned out, my husband and I developed health issues that would have complicated that trip. My sister, who is now 82, lamented that she wasn’t sure how many more years she would have for us to make these trips together. I assured her that we’d have plenty of them; there’s longevity in our family. It’s not that I thought we were indestructible and would live forever. I just felt we had a lot of years ahead of us. “There’s always next year” had been my mantra.
Recently I started to think about the trips my sister and I expect to make. I hope everyone is healthy enough for one by fall, but even with the COVID vaccine now a reality, I doubt we’d risk traveling this year. Perhaps in 2022.
I had a sudden realization that COVID was stealing years from those of us who don’t have many years left to lose. Before COVID forced me to stay at home, I was here much of the time anyway, so it didn’t feel like much of a sacrifice. I don’t feel that way any more. It has dawned on me that every year that my sister and I can’t travel together is a stolen one.
Our remaining years no longer spread out ahead of us like a magic carpet of travel time. We were never expecting to live forever. But we also weren’t expecting to have the years we were counting on be taken away from us without warning and through no fault of our own.
This may sound like a simple realization of my own mortality, but it’s something different than that. Recognizing your own mortality simply means that you know there’s an end out there somewhere. Stolen years are different. Those are years that should have been there to be lived and enjoyed in your limited, mortal future, but are no longer there.
Young people have time to adjust, to recover from lost time. Seniors don’t have that luxury. Once a year has been stolen from us, we can never get it back. My mantra is no longer “There’s always next year.” It’s “I hope there will BE a next year.” And not just for my sister and me, but for all of us. In the meantime, I’ve decided I will not dwell on the year or two that COVID will have stolen. I’m going to focus on reclaiming my life, one day, one week, and one month at a time. After all, days, weeks, months—that’s what years are made of.
Copyright 2021 Business Theatre Unlimited
