Prabhneet Kaur
( This creative writing piece emerged from ‘Sampark- Emotional well-being for covid warriors’ session)
For all of us who have been living in a bubble of a life for so long, Covid-19 came as a reality check. It taught us how unpredictable and fragile life is, and how difficult it can be to handle a situation in reality, even if there are umpteen historical records available on similar situations that have happened before. I was gifted a fictional work on black-death in 2019. A new-found pandemic became our reality the following year itself. I have been holding my breath since the beginning of 2020, even though I haven’t contracted the virus myself, at least not as yet. It has made me worry on too many levels to sleep peacefully on most nights.
This past year has made me grow up too much too quickly. It is weird sitting here talking about breath as for me it all started from that only. In January, 2020, my father had got ill. He got treatment but did not get well. In February, one
horrible day, he faced problem breathing. His blood pressure had dropped beyond normal. It never got up. I lost him soon after. I was not even done mourning his loss when Covid cases started spiking in India. I had no choice left. I had to leave my mother alone with grandparents to take care of. They both are above 80. My mother told me she was okay but I was paranoid.
My mother, before the death of my father, had been totally dependent on him. She had rarely gone out of the house alone, she was also not used to of sleeping alone in a room. Papa had been her go to person for everything for so long, she was lost without him.
It was next level of tragedy for my mother when my grandpa had to leave the house to get treated of Dementia at my uncle’s place and with him grandma had to as well. As mom didn’t want to leave her house yet, I stayed with her, for over a month, away from my husband, just a year or so after our marriage. I was in a fix and had no solution to this predicament I was now in. But then one day she told me I could leave and she would be okay alone.
It was then that I realised how much she’d grown in that one year itself. We have been visiting her every chance we get, but she has been doing fine, taking good care of herself (I double-checked). I still don’t know if I can safely breathe out yet, but yes she has definitely made me proud. We all have strength within us; sometimes we are not aware of it, till being strong is the only option left.