Remember the Refrigerator Trucks

On election day 2022, I was driving past Timber Lane Elementary, which doubles as a polling place. In front of the school along with the candidates’ political signs was a sign objecting to government mandates imposed during the pandemic. DOWN WITH VACCINE MANDATES! NO MORE MASK MANDATES! NO ONE SHOULD NOT BE FORCED TO VACCINATE. You get the idea. The early days of the pandemic came back to me: my fear, my anxiety, my confusion about a virus that was spreading around the world. Would I contract it and die? Would someone I love die from it?

During my nearly three-quarters of a century on this planet, I have experienced many upheavals, personal as well as political—the Vietnam War, in which male friends, some right out of high school, were forced to risk their lives; our wars in the Middle East; 9/11/01 when Saudis brought the war to us, killing civilians at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania, where brave Americans sacrificed themselves, so that their airplane would not crash into its target, most likely the Capitol. Yet never had I imagined a crisis like the pandemic, which closed down the world and killed millions.

Join me for a moment to remember those dark early days. In March of 2020, Dan and I had just gotten back from a wonderful trip to Seville, Spain. There we read about the virus in Milan, Italy and in China. By then people had died in the US, the first recorded death in February 2020. At this point EU countries began to shut down. In Italy, people quarantining for months in their apartments went out on their balconies at twilight and sang, a trend that spread throughout Europe. Their singing provided a moment of solidarity that said: we are in here, still alive, you are not alone.

California was the first US state to close down. Others soon joined. Residents were required to stay inside except to go out for groceries, medicines, etc. Only essential workers could go to their jobs. The grocery store workers, as well as the Instacart workers, Amazon drivers and the like were on the frontline of the pandemic. Many died because they were out in public doing their jobs. Dan and I did not wait for Virginia to close down. We started quarantining in March, only going outside to walk with masks on. We ordered everything we needed online.

How quickly life changed. Rarely did we use our cars. A tank of gas lasted for months. Eventually we took drives, so we did not feel closed in. In early May, we drove past National Memorial Funeral Home, which is just across Lee Highway from our development. There we saw refrigerator trucks lined up outside the funeral home to hold bodies because their morgue was filled. We had seen refrigerator trucks on television news outside hospitals and nursing homes that were used to hold the dead, but never imagined them in our neighborhood. Suffering, dying and death were close. I have lived in this neighborhood since 1979 and probably knew someone in those trucks. At this point almost 100,000 people had died in the US from the coronavirus.

I talked to my sister, my son, and friends almost daily, but we saw no one. I missed the world and wondered: would this be the way our lives would always be? I saw no end to the pandemic. Our only hope: the possibility of a vaccine. As spring heated up into summer, Dan’s children and grandchildren came over, but everyone stayed masked in the backyard. My son and Meg, his lady, had dinner with us on the back deck. All of us were masked, except when we were eating. We went through a bleak winter, buoyed by news that vaccines might be available soon. John asked Meg to marry him! We celebrated with dinner here, but sat at separate tables and stayed masked.

We combed the Washington Post and New York Times and watched the evening news hoping to hear about vaccines! Never was there a time when this country needed a strong competent federal government, but we did not have one. We had no confidence in the Trump administration, but we did believe in Dr. Fauci, still do. Epidemiologists who appeared on television news felt like friends. We especially liked the calm, reassuring Dr. Ashish Jha, who now works at the Biden White House.

February 2021 our prayers were answered. We got our first doses of the Moderna vaccine. So grateful was I, that tears welled in my eyes when the nurse inserted the needle into my arm. I sensed the vaccine coursing through me. For almost a year, we had been held hostage by the virus. We hoped for freedom and a return to normal life.

We were overjoyed when we got our second doses, which meant: we would be able to see family and friends again; we would be able to travel to Europe, our favorite destination. Since then, we have gotten our boosters and traveled to Paris, back to sunny Seville, and to Belgium in September ‘22. But it is the simple moments that make me feel the pull of tears. May I never take for granted sitting with a friend in a coffee shop, meeting my son and future daughter-in-law for lunch, strolling through the National Gallery of Art or even the Safeway. All are blessings.

So, when I saw this stupid sign objecting to government mandates about masks, vaccines, etc. I got angry. How quickly we Americans forget: over a million people have now died of covid in the US. In the beginning of the pandemic, we did not know what we did not know. Today many object to why we did what we did. A friend often rails about closing schools, now that we know children do not contract covid as easily as adults, but we did not know this at the time. 2020 hindsight about the pandemic is prevalent. Now a new disease runs rampant in the US. I call it ISM: INCREDIBLY SHORT MEMORY. Remembering is the cure. May I never forget the refrigerator trucks.