“Am I bothering you?” Dad’s calling again.
You sure are! (I’m really not doing anything that can’t be interrupted.)
“Good!” Dad will turn 93 in just a few days. We would be in Michigan right now to celebrate his birthday as well as my sister’s first anniversary and our oldest granddaughter’s graduation, but COVID is cancelling and complicating a lot of plans.
Dad’s been painfully lonely since my mom died eight-and-a-half years ago, and nearly unbearably so since COVID.
Before the pandemic, he was still driving a little—mostly to the nearby Family Fare to talk to people and distribute some hugs but never buying much. He’s living the quarantine life now, and there’s no going anywhere. So he watches the news or “In the Heat of the Night” reruns (his TV is on 24/7) or plays on his computer—which usually amounts to reading the local newspaper or playing a favorite game on Pogo. He might click a link to watch the fancy chickens that belong to friends who live in the Netherlands. He also hopes to catch a glimpse of the friends themselves. It was a near tragedy when the power went out. It wasn’t just the lights and coffee pot and microwave that it took down. It also took his connections to the outside—the computer, the TV, and the phone.
Grab a cup of tea and travel on over to Tweetspeak Poetry where I’m sharing the rest of the story under the title Pandemic Journal: An Entry on Caring From a Distance. See you there.
