Too soon or not, a taste of pandemic nostalgia

After an unmitigated disaster has passed, when can you say anything good about it, beyond the point when anybody might say “too soon”?

After WWII ended in 1945, it took 20 years before “Hogan’s Heroes” could crack jokes about life in a German prisoner of war camp. It took a similar number of decades before “Mash” could get us laughing about a Korean War triage medical hospital.

And although I have no jokes to share about Covid 19, I can’t help but feel that in some ways the “pandemic years” were among the best years of my life — because a world-wide disaster like a pandemic can bring sighs of fond nostalgia if you tuck it in between the two most personally disastrous periods of your life.

My wife’s health plummeted in 2006, leaving her severely disabled from heart ailments, uterine cancer, and strokes. I was her full-time caregiver. Gail and I had been married for 48 years when she died of a stroke in 2018, and I was devastated.

Not long after Gail passed, I met Carol, who had lost her husband decades earlier. She had undertaken the same sort of full-time caregiving that I had, and had even written a book about it. She understood the sad, grueling road I had traveled, and she helped me manage my grief. In time we came to love each other.

By early 2020, we considered ourselves to be partners. But that connection came with complications, owing to a world-wide pandemic that limited how much interaction anybody on the planet could have with any other person on the planet. Life-long loved ones were forced to watch their partners die through a glass partition, or worse, were banished from seeing them at all in their final moments.

All of us in the world were forced to choose our “bubble,” the small number of people to whom we would restrict our human contacts until the disaster was ready to pass us by.

And because our family bubbles of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and all of their jobs and schools was too risky for all involved, our close interactions with all of them would have to wait. Soo too with neighbors and friends.

But for Carol and me — a pair of disjointed septuagenarians — a small bubble of two who enjoyed each other’s company quite a lot sounded like a pretty good way to ride out the storm. And so we did.

Entertainment in shuttered pubs and concert halls was out of the question, so we spent a lot of time on YouTube, where some of our favorite musicians like John Fogerty and John Prine posted in-home concerts.

Through them we came to know other artists associated with them. Todd Snider taped a 2-hour show every Sunday from The Purple Building in East Nashville. Hayes Carll also performed a weekly show from his Nashville home.

Almost every week, a new video dropped of artists Zoom-collaborating remotely on a song from every imaginable spot on the planet, including some of our favorite artists like Taj Mahal and Keb Mo.

That was our evening entertainment for Carol and me, after days spent writing or assembling one after another jigsaw puzzle. To get out of the house, we kayaked, fished, or hiked through people-free woods where there was no virus to inhale or pass on. On nice days, we sat outside reading books to each other.

And at the end of the day, we would light the fireplace, candles, or propane firepit, turn on some Pandora music, pour a drink, and let the day slide to a gentle conclusion.

Although variants of the pandemic lingered, over time the isolation and the limitations eased, and Carol and I were able to take a few jaunts to places like Berea, Kentucky, and Bar Harbor, Maine. We had more extensive trips planned once international travel would broaden in 2023.

But Carol died suddenly of a stroke on Labor Day weekend, 2022, just as the world was opening again.

So now, with the door wide open for traveling anywhere I might want to go, I find myself alone. But there is nowhere I care to go without someone I love by my side to share it.

So, although you might find it “too soon” to speak of the pandemic years with any hint of fond nostalgia, in my heart those years are among the most peaceful, connected, committed years of my entire life. I was happy then in ways that I have not been happy since, or may ever be again.

We have all had our own pandemic experience. If you lost someone during that time and were robbed of a proper farewell, then you will never be able to see that time as anything but a curse, and I am truly sorry for you.

But for me — whether it’s too soon or not to say it — I fall asleep each night missing the intimately connected days and nights those years imposed upon us. For the rest of my life, the word “pandemic” will doubtless bring a hidden peaceful smile to my heart.

And if our lives flash before us when we die, I would want to slow the film and spend a big chunk of eternity revisiting the quiet daily joy I knew during the pandemic years.

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.

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