My COVID-19 Could-Have-Beens

Today, roughly seven months after day 1 of the virus, I think of the “could-have-beens.” Futile, yes, but sometimes you do what you do to keep your so-called sanity intact. So

here I go.

If I had to go back to day 1 when the COVID-19 virus struck mankind, I would have done a few things differently. I would have chatted with my friends until my saliva would dry out because I would not be able to do that from now on. I would have hugged my husband more openly and more often as that is improbable right now. He couldn’t even come home to rest in his own bed to be with us.

 

If it were only within my finite power, I would have done anything to break its spread. But what power do I hold to even track this invisible enemy that rapidly reached nooks and crannies of this planet and infected the vulnerable breathing being in our friends, coworkers, and loved ones? The pandemic becomes that darkness that closes in on us even as I write these thoughts down. And what scares us is that tomorrow is the most uncertain future we all are tentative to step into. Hours from now, a day or two my neighbors or yours might not be able to wake up and might just go too soon. And we are left with that heaviness not just because of fear of death but because of that uncertainty that hangs so menacingly up ahead. That we are no longer in control shakes the core of that self-reliant man in us. All that money that we save for our kids’ future; all those investments we painstakingly put up are now held in the frail fate of the crumbling economy; all that hopes our hard-earned reputations built are now thrown into thin air. Nothing defines tomorrow now. If anything, it’s the hardest time to see it.

Perhaps, the minister who enunciated that “it is only in God’s sovereign will that all this uncertainty and unrest be put to a perspective” is right. Perhaps the only thing I can do now is be at the posture of prayer, the one last thing we can have.