Remember?

10/18/2023:

Dear Mama,

No—I haven’t gotten out of the house at all, really. The world has lost its mind, and I am still far from home and very alone and my kids need me to stay here. Safe. Healthy. They need someone to take care of them.

Do you remember?

Do you remember how sick I used to get? How everyone around me would catch a cold and then be back on their feet in a day or two, but I would catch that same cold and then get sicker and sicker every day, and then have a really hard time breathing, and eventually end up with a chest full of phlegm that turned into bronchitis, settled into pneumonia, and you would bring me homemade chicken soup and saltines and oranges and grapefruits and vitamins except I was too busy vomiting to keep anything down, so you finally gave up and just gave me saltines and diet coke. And then when the days of saltines and diet coke began to outnumber the days I could eat solid food, and my fingertips turned blue and I got extra quiet and just kind of lay there on the bed, unmoving, staring at the ceiling to preserve all energy to push towards taking my next breath…then, you would take me to the Emergency Room.

Remember?

Remember how they would be all nasty and strict and tell us to wait our turn, like we weren’t actually having an emergency, and we would wait—right up until the admitting nurse wondered aloud why I wasn’t talking and you were answering all the questions for me and you would explain that I couldn’t breathe and she would look at my very blue fingertips and her whole face would change and she would stop the admissions process and bring us straight back? We would skip ahead of the toddlers with colds terrorizing the waiting room; ahead of the middle-aged women folded over in pain; go right past the twenty-somethings who had been in a fight and were bleeding all over the already disgusting waiting room chairs; we would even skip ahead of all the old people sitting in a wheelchair, looking like they hadn’t been washed for days, in pain. Alone. Wishing their life was over, already?

Remember?

Remember how the doctor would come to examine me quickly because I couldn’t breathe and that one time, he asked what I had been eating because you told him I hadn’t been able to keep food down, and you told him about the diet coke and the saltines with a twinge of pride in your voice and he looked…curious…and asked why diet coke? And you said it was because it was better for me because I was a little heavy…and he just calmly said that when I wasn’t eating, if all I could keep down was coke, it was much better for my body to at least have some calories, and so give me regular coke if that was all that was going to stay down. And you seemed so confused, but you stopped giving me diet coke when I was sick.

Remember?

And then they would find the pneumonia, and they would admit me and pump me full of steroids and give me breathing treatments and find me a single room so I could go into isolation for a week? Because they didn’t know why I was so sick, or how I got that bad, or how I was still breathing so they didn’t want to risk exposing me to anymore germs than necessary?

Remember?

And then I would come home and lay in bed for another two weeks until I was strong enough to go back to school? And two months later, I would catch another cold and it would start all over again. The bronchitis. The struggling to breathe. The blue fingertips and the Emergency Room.

Remember?

I do. And so, I’m not going to leave the house anytime soon.

I wonder, if some of these folks who are running amok so gleefully coughing and sneezing all over everyone else had a small taste of that experience, would they still refuse to wear masks?

Probably.

Love,

Me

************************************************************************

Dear Me,

I remember, baby. I really do remember.

When our babies are sick, we are beyond ourselves with worry, especially when their sickness goes beyond a simple cold.

Do you know what else I remember? I remember how strong you were, always keeping calm, always maintaining your breath. Your lung capacity stunned even the doctors when they saw the severity of the pneumonia. Sometimes, I wish you hadn’t been so strong so I knew how bad you were struggling before your fingertips were blue. You just looked so…peaceful and okay, and I’m sorry I would wait so long to take you to the hospital.

Do you know what else I remember? I remember what a remarkable young woman you grew into. That strength never went away. You were determined to get that asthma under control and heal faster when you were exposed to a virus, and I was amazed to watch you grow from that little girl who couldn’t make it through the winter without several visits to the hospital, to a young woman steadily out there doing her thing, emergency room visits few and far between over the years.

I hope you know you don’t have to be that strong anymore. I hope you know you can ask for help when you need it, and that I’ll always be here for you, even if I don’t always get it right.

Love,

Mama