Seeing What COVID-19 Sees
Seeing What COVID-19 Sees:
Lessons from a global pandemic
by Sara Kernan
April last year my life looked very different. My husband and I sat in wait as we were given a six-month extension on his military contract to figure out our next step. We tried, but door after door slammed in our faces. Every opportunity seemed promising, but I struggled with getting too eager too quickly. I stepped into each dream fully and saw our lives in that context. In the military, out of the military. One state or another. Abroad and in every region of the United States. In a matter of months, I had lived dozens of lives and I was thoroughly exhausted from it.
I didn’t know that following this time last year, we would have moved cross country... twice. Matt would get out of the military and start a job and then start another job and we'd add a scrappy rescue dog to our crew. I grew in resilience and grit. We cried together and laughed together and danced in the kitchen together. We eventually started dreaming again about what our life could look like.
A year ago today, I had no clue I'd be where I am now: in Michigan, of all places, walking my pup in the middle of a global pandemic, of all things. From where my feet are, life finally looks normal. Until you look up and notice the way my neighbors and I make careful orbits around one another like planets in an orchestrated dance -- a careful attempt to maintain social distancing.
The increasing bad news about COVID-19 fills headlines and hangs heavy over the vacant aisles of the grocery store. But, I've noticed in all of this, that darkness makes the light easier to see. A global pandemic makes you see things you didn't see before.
A pandemic isn't ideal. But with it, we've been lent eyes to see things in a new light, to empathize in ways we never have, and to be creative and innovative with how we connect and work. Call me crazy, but I think we might just come out of this better.
A local indie bookstore that feared closure received over 700 online orders in a few days to keep them afloat while "Closed" signs sway in storefronts.
Online resources for families thrown into home school now have been made free.
Neighborhoods in Italy serenade one another quarantined from their balconies.
The Coronavirus has made the invisible, visible. The forgotten, remembered. The immune-compromised are compromised daily and the fears we all carry now, are their fears regularly. I remember a coworker who missed work frequently because of it. It’s easier to empathize with the work of another when you give space for grace of what we cannot see.
It’s easier now to be thinking about the kids that rely on a public education for food, for safe spaces when the doors have been closed. Where will they go now? People are taking up the responsibility to investigate and care for others.
Foster care programs, and Big Brother Big Sister programs are more important now than ever. Will we remember to fight for kids to be in safe homes through advocacy, and supporting an overworked and complicated social services system when there isn't a pandemic?
It's easier to remember the elderly when a disease threatens to compromise them fatally. But the elderly are vulnerable and they’re lonely not just now but before and after the Coronavirus.
It’s easier to understand the realities of food scarcity when aisles are empty. This is nothing compared to those that go hungry in our neighborhoods and across the world regardless of the stock of the supermarket.
It's easier to relate to mental health disorders or emotional anxieties. Empathy spills in realize that it’s hard to be productive when darkness sits heavy on one’s chest. Loneliness is recognized as real grief when we realize how communal we are as people, yearning for simplicity like meeting an old friend for coffee, or the hustle and bustle of downtown.
I want to see what I see in a COVID-19 world even when the skies clear and toilet paper aisle is restocked.
It’s easier to show support for others from the comfort of our screens. And for now, loving well is loving alone. But what will love look like when we can step back into the patterns of familiarity, hug one another without fear?
I want to remember. Because this gift of sight, to really see our neighbors, is everything. And something that we are quick to forget beyond mission trips, news headlines, and volunteering.
If April last year looks so different from April now, I dream of Aprils to come.
I think back to the lives I painted and erased, redrew and remade. And I dream of April beyond. The lives that we will build, rebuild, arrange and rearrange as a world. I dream to be better, to love more fully, than any April before.