And off he went into the night…
That was my eighty-nine year old Dad, riding off in an ambulance on the way to the emergency room. It was late on a warm Friday night. We called an ambulance because of discomfort he felt from a routine procedure he underwent earlier in the day. And, because he is eighty-nine years old, we did not want to take chances. The EMTs arrived in a big, box-like van from the fire department. They loaded my father inside. My Dad and I gave each other a wave and an “I love you” and off he went.
But what was really incredible is we couldn’t follow him because of Covid protocols. No visitors in the emergency room. My sister and I were left standing in front of my childhood home wondering if that was the last time we would see him alive. In normal times, we would be frantically getting all our stuff together to go and camp out at the emergency room with him. As word would go out, other family members would stop in at the emergency room and give their support.
But not in the age of Covid.
Now, I’m not arguing with the wisdom of those protocols. Everything worked out fine and my Dad is home happy and healthy. But, it was shocking to be confronted with yet another Covid reality we had not anticipated.
Standing there on a warm night, in quiet sleepy suburbia, with my father taken away, I felt like I was in a Ray Bradbury sci-fi short story. Like the kind I used to read growing up in my childhood home.
The Covid-19 pandemic can not be over soon enough.
Copyright Christopher Donahue 2020