It's a Small World After All, The Global Pandemic

Unsung

by Betty Wadland

             

04/20/2020

Outside my mother's assisted living here in Charlevoix are signs that say, “Heroes Work Here” I noticed them set up like the old Burma Shave signs along the busy highway as I turned into the parking lot.

All of the doors are locked now at American House. An Alexa Ring door alert's blue-lighted iris circles the clear lens of the camera watching the entry. A warning sign cataloging the restrictions is fixed to the door. Pressing the doorbell, a merry chime sounds.  The wait is indeterminate. “Keeper of the gate” is a duty added to the already busy staff.  The heavy door clunking open always startles me.  A hand sanitizer container stands silent century while my temperature is checked and paper work attesting to the lack of any symptoms is filled out and signed. 

Once inside, I am reminded of an empty church or funeral home without mourners or the smell of flowers for the quiet yet pregnant silence.

Today, Leslie is my admitter.  She is the activities director of which there are none.  Most are cancelled.   The dining area is closed while residents are served meals in their rooms and eat alone. Leslie and I exchange pleasantries, we are both “fine.”  Only our eyes are visible above our masks.   Mentioning the hero signs out front, she glumly replies, “I don’t feel like a hero.”  Leslie went her way and I went mine, to room number 4.  It’s shower day for my 95 year old, wheel chair bound mother.  I’m a nurse who happens to be a family member.  That’s my lucky ticket into an environment where people have not been allowed visitors in weeks.  

At 10:30 there’s a knock on my mom’s door and it’s Leslie.  “Janet, time for exercise.”

Residents move to chairs outside their doors and safe distances from each other.  Leslie starts into the arm exercises with weights in a drill sergeant voice.  She’s at the end of the long hall with a microphone and speaker.   The short session ends with leg marching and singing, "Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In."  I come close to crying with the irony of it all. 

Heroine implies heroics, brave action in a time of need.   However, unsung reminds me of the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”  Unsung, unrewarded, unrecognized.   This pandemic has an army of souls who risk their lives, some because they have chosen but more because they must.  It is the job that feeds their families and pays the bills. It is a profession or career chosen while never imagining the danger.

Yesterday, a Raven dropped down like a black parachute to the ground beside the bird feeder visible from my kitchen window.  This was the first time I had seen a raven so close.  A black beauty, sleek and gleaming in the morning sun strutted, pecked and tilted her head in silent queries before taking off in graceful flight, body tilting through the close stand of pine.  In the reverie of the moment, I thought of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem and the Raven’s reply, “Nevermore.”

Nevermore will the world be the same.  Our unsung heroines, such as Leslie, are reluctant heroes caught in something new and bewildering but requiring brave action or brave forbearance or brave imagining.    Nevermore will I sneeze or hear a cough and not think of my own mortality.

Tomorrow, I will thank Leslie. And all the unsung heroes that walk and breathe and work among us; the transit workers, health care professionals, clerks at pharmacies, hardware stores and groceries, police and emergency responders.     

How will it end?  When will it end?  How will we all be different or the same?  When Leslie said, I don’t feel like a hero, her eyes were weary as if they could see a long difficult road ahead.