5 May 2023 WHO declared with great hope an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency, stressing that it does not mean the disease is no longer a global threat. This disaster had wreaked havoc worldwide. Besides the nearly 7 millions deaths to grieve, the virus had separated families and friends into two camps: the vaccinated and non-vaccinated. I won’t elaborate more about this as for some it is still a painful issue to discuss.
Image by Freepik
What I want to share here is how the pandemic and corona virus have changed my life as this blog is my personal journal. Perhaps if this platform would still exist decades later, somebody who reads this, would get an idea how common people like I am, perceived the pandemic. Well, about the changes in my life the pandemic has brought, here they come. I am now used to cough with my left arm covering my mouth. My company allows its employees to work hybrid, as of now: I work 60% at the office and 40% at home. Suggesting a meeting does not automatically a gathering in person, when some colleagues of business relations join online, it is not a problem. Online shopping has become a norm.
B.C. (Before Corona), being loyal to Dutch custom, I greeted people I knew by kissing them on the cheek. A.C. (After Corona) I have become selective doing this and just offer a handshake or a light hug instead. Last summer I spent the summer holiday abroad in Portugal (more stories and pics are coming). That was the first time I took a flight during the pandemic. I noticed that time that I was a bit anxious in the plane and also in places there in Portugal where there were crowds.
Although it feels like the past three years don’t exist, the calendar counting continues whether I like it or not. When I refer to an event in 2019 or earlier, I still have last year in my mind. Then the reality kicks in, it is now effin’ 2023!
This dreadful calamity contributed to a relativity theory of time. During the first lockdown, life was horrendously slow, I mean real slow. My radius of movement is home, supermarkt, park within a vicinity of 3 km. Hope bounced back in spring 2021 with fairly pleasant summer within the circumstances but the lockdown in the fall 2021 catapulted my hope back. I have been suffering from homesick since then. Then came 2022 and it was a hefty shock to realise, ok, two years had passed just like that? The time was slow but at the same time it was fast because time did not stop, even during a worldly catastrophe. In January – February 2022, coming to this realisation I thought often of Salvador Dalí’s masterpiece: The Persistence of Memory. The painting defies surrealism to reality and questions the inevitability of time in the same reasoning af I wrote above. Time feels slow but fast, was I dreaming?
During the first lockdown, people thought this would be over by the end of the year, but how wrong we were then. Covid19 pandemic has sent a severe warning that life is precious and actually we human do not need too many things as long as we are healthy.
To those who lost their loved-ones during this catastrophe, I send you my condolences and empathy. May you all be soothed and take proper time to grieve.
Chez Lorraine 
The Persistence of Memory is one of my favorite. I hope you’re doing well.
It confuses me a bit when I read posts like this, well, maybe brings it home how lucky (and resilient) we are rather than confuses, because COVID has left absolutely not a single lasting impression or change of lifestyle for us. During COVID, as soon as the UK Government gave permission to travel, we flew off to wherever didn’t insist on quarantine. We were travelling the world for virtually every day that we were allowed through those pandemic years. Luckily we lost no one, and no one we know suffered badly. I can honestly say that there is not one single effect on our lives now, we live exactly as we did pre-COVID, there is nothing in our lives which was a change which was brought about by the pandemic. I think we’re in a minority!