Day #319 Writing Through COVID-19: Let's Celebrate

My parents received their second vaccine doses today. A photo on their care center's Facebook page is my proof:

My dad chats with the healthcare worker after receiving his second dose of the COVID vaccine.
My mom is behind him, her back to the camera.

When COVID brought the world to a halt last March, my siblings made panicked phone calls. We couldn't deny our parents were old. Our mom was increasingly demented and our dad's physical health had already given us two this-might-be-it scares. 

The five of us agreed that our parents had already lived long, satisfying lives full of generosity and quirkiness. They had already left the world a better place than they found it. 

But losing them to a rampant virus while their lives were still mostly satisfying seemed unbearably cruel. 

We set into motion our rescue plan: moving them into my basement. 

They lived here during the first five harrowing months of the pandemic. They returned to their care center when school started up again and I could no longer protect them from virus exposure.
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My parents have now been back at Friendship Haven longer than they lived with me. My mind cannot hold these two epochs as equals. Experience distorts time.
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As I see my parents receive their second COVID dose, a weight lifts--and a weight settles:

They will not die of COVID.

But yes, they will die. 

Their health, mental and physical, is declining. There may come a day when we'll look back and wished they'd died during COVID when they were both still relatively healthy and happy. 

Let's not go there yet. 

Right now, I celebrate that within a year of the virus's onslaught, we are vaccinating.
I celebrate that my parents may now be able to see their family without fear of contracting the virus.

And I celebrate that at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 5, I am scheduled for the "Educators' Clinic" and will receive my first dose of the vaccine.

Enough.
Be well.
Write.

Allison