Beginnings and Endings
An essay from my pandemic file
Beginnings and Endings
Judy L. Mandel
We waited an extra year for my husband to retire. He wanted to give his employer more time to fill his spot and help with training. So, now it was January of 2020. We packed our largest suitcases for a three-week cruise through the Panama Canal. The longest vacation we ever planned, now that it was possible.
A friend suggested we bring medical masks for the trip because she heard there was a new virus from overseas, but we thought that was a paranoid worry. On the long flight from Boston to San Francisco there were one or two people masked. I figured they were cautious because of medical conditions.
The ship left out of San Francisco, with stops down the California coast, then Mexico and islands along the way to the canal. We found our favorite bar on board and the bartender who made any drink we could think up. The food was good, the service exceptional and the live music all around the ship made it feel like a non-stop party.
One night watching TV in our cabin we heard vague news of the infectious virus in China. So far there were no reported cases in the US. Until the next day. Just one, they said. Oh, maybe there is community transmission. My husband and I exchanged a worried glance and shrugged. Nothing for us to do now. Open the champagne, get tickets for our next excursion.
The shows on board were fun and raucous, with musicals and dance numbers we thought were some of the best we’d seen on a cruise. But one night someone coughed behind me and I felt a chill down my spine. In a day I felt a tickle in my throat. Nothing awful, but I was not in the mood for a big dinner. Just a whiskey and a salad. In another day, my husband joined me in coughing. We could hardly stop.
We started avoiding the cramped elevators. More of our fellow passengers seemed to be coughing. One man stopped midway up a stairway coughing and when he looked up I saw his eyes ringed in red. The ship’s sundry store ran out of cough medicine.
Still, we headed out the next day on our planned excursion in Cabo San Lucas. We ignored our coughs and took in the sun, blue sky and local musicians greeting the ship. Meeting us at the end of the ramp was an ambulance and a gurney loaded with ice. Everyone tried to ignore it, and the possible implication. Until we saw our tour guide on the bus scramble to put on a mask. I felt a rising panic, but we took our seats for the four hour tour. When we got back to the ship, we cancelled the remainder of our excursions and went to bed.
The next day we left the ship only in search of medicine. We weren’t the only ones. A line of cruise passengers snaked around the corner of the only pharmacy on the Dutch island. We bought a few boxes of something that looked like cold and cough medicine and made our way back to our cabin where we remained for the last week of the cruise. For a while we sent for room service, but then stopped that too. We took turns going out to find food. It was survival mode now.
We coughed nearly non-stop and had no appetite. My husband’s eyes were puffy and red. We were eternally grateful we had a suite and an added bathroom, a lucky last minute upgrade, or we may have killed each other. Each long night we woke each other when we didn’t hear coughing to be sure the other was still alive.
The beginning of this retirement was nearly our end. It wasn’t. We made it home, straight to the ER and got some medicine that may have helped. Who knows. We still don’t know if we had Covid-19 because there was no test yet. Finally after six weeks we began to recover.
I wondered why my feet sank into the mud. It was certainly cold enough to freeze the ground in the cemetery. I wished there were at least some leaves on the trees to block the expanse of graves. It was an overwhelming sea of markers and I had no idea where to walk so I didn’t traipse over someone’s grave. We followed the rabbi and pallbearers solemnly through the trees to the open grave. When the men had come up the aisle of the synagogue for her coffin, I wanted to stop them. Where are you going with her? Leave her with us!
Now they were lowering her into the hole. It was a shaky prospect. Unbelievably a corner of the plain pine coffin lifted up. The small group of us gasped together, held our breath until it was jammed back into place. The woman in that box would have had a field day with this fact and we would have laughed together and maybe one of us would have written a short story where this happened to the shock of the mourners. Yes, she would have been the one to do that. Using that material to its best advantage. I’ll add this to the long list of things I’ll miss about her. She would have also been the one I would have called to cry to when a dear friend passed.
The October day was all we could have hoped it would be. Crisp and cool. Blue sky backdrop to red and yellow leaves decorating the backyard. I hung some additional colorful plants on the light post and placed a few white mums to indicate that this was a wedding celebration. A pandemic wedding. My son called me only two weeks ago to give me this date and tell me to plan something small. He and his fiancé didn’t want to wait to get married.
“We’ll have a proper wedding when this is all over,” he promised.
I got busy with a caterer, a florist, a cake. I wanted it to be at least something for them to remember fondly. His best friend would perform the ceremony; the only other guest his girlfriend. I knew others were having more lavish pandemic weddings, but with a two-week window, I did what I could. I tried not to mourn the bigger wedding I had envisioned for my only son. The mother-son dance. The relatives and friends sharing the joy. The music and dancing.
We Zoomed in the far off family. The bride’s out in Missouri, a friend overseas. The sound was never very good, but the recording came out better. The canapes and cake were excellent! The champagne was delish. And my little boy was married. Just like that.
By the next October he had a little boy of his own. Beginnings begin no matter how, no matter the circumstance. Life keeps on.