COVID Is Ending And My Mom Never Even Saw It

On moving through our horrible history with and without her

Content warning: Covid. 

So, Covid’s over. Many have asked if the pandemic is over or we just decided it’s over. I don’t think there’s really a difference. In our society, we’re always choosing which things that cause death and suffering we’re going to, like, bring up with the group. That’s the kind of decision we’re always making. And we usually decide to keep it quiet. Now with Covid we’re just weighing the risks, like crossing a busy street and yelling “I’m running after the next car!” and then bolting without consensus. You hope your friends are behind you.

We’re running now. The thing is not everyone is crossing with us. 

I don’t like that there's a historical event between me and my mom’s death. I don’t like that we’re now in a period of time that doesn’t overlap with her timeline. Like in a 6th grade Social Studies book there would be a timeline of different eras: “my mom’s life” and then “Covid.” (Who’s teaching a unit that includes both? Is this an accredited school?) I see those lines -- these lines I just made up -- not quite meeting and I think about how if I focus enough, I can maybe make them touch. There’s no gap in those timelines if I just work hard at thinking that. 

This feels like a weird historical fact to me, like when you hear “Thomas Jefferson never rode a steam engine” and you’re like “huh ok,” but instead it’s me saying “my mom didn’t live to see Covid” and then it’s the bodega man saying “but do you want a straw?” And I’m like “Did you hear what I said about my mom and, yes, I want a straw!” I’ve cut up so many plastic six packs to save these turtles and now they’re coming for straws? At some point, it feels like turtles are just trying to control our soda consumption. At some point, that’s a turtle problem, not a me problem. (JK, love to all turtles reading this!) 

I don’t like that she died during Trump’s presidency. I had planned on calling her on election night 2016. We would celebrate a woman president over the phone. She was sick. She was dying. But we would have this. Except we didn’t.

She took it well. She actually seemed the least bothered of anyone I knew. (No one talks about how centering chemo is!) “You should have seen how upset I was the night Reagan was elected,” she said. She meant this like “things will always be okay,” but four and half years later, you kinda have to see the lesson as “things have always been bad.”

I remember watching the 1992 presidential election results with my parents, who were Baby Boomer liberals, so the election of Bill Clinton was, uh, a big deal. It turned out a Baby Boomer being elected president wasn’t exactly a moment you needed to savor. They keep releasing new Baby Boomer presidents like sequels to a movie you only kinda liked the first time. Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” was the campaign song and I can remember singing “yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.” Yesterday would be back, but we did not know that then.

We learned in my 1999 U.S. History class that there was actually a president once in 1886 who had won the Electoral College but not the popular vote. And — we were told — that could technically happen again! Probably won’t tho. Well, not twice more. Well, if it does happen twice in the next 16 years, surely it will only benefit two really cool dudes and it will all work out. How could it unfold any other way but in the favor of the children of the 90s?

That was what I thought as a teen. True national problems are fading. There are problems in some other countries, but we will help fix those. I mean, there’s Will & Grace! I realize that to ever have thought that is the result of tremendous privilege, but I still think it reflects a unique moment in time. I don’t think today a straight white upper middle class girl in U.S. History class learns about the atrocities of the past and thinks “couldn’t be me!” She thinks “what’s next?” I can’t decide if I’m jealous of or pity younger people. They never had hope. Their moms will die and they’ll be like “figures!” Geriatric Millennials (fun! new! term!) are perpetually feeling like we got the wind knocked out of us after falling off the swings.

I went to Berlin once and an old woman came up to me speaking German (tracks) and when she figured out I couldn't speak German, made a stab at speaking to me in Russian. She was East German. She wasn’t just speaking to me in two different languages: she was speaking to me across time. I was an American in East Berlin speaking English. I wasn’t the plan. She wasn’t raised to communicate with me. I feel like her sometimes, except I don’t speak German or Russian: I’m just wandering around desperately trying to communicate in Geriatric Millennial languages like the Step-By-Step theme song and the dial-up sound. So my story is like her story, but low-stakes. 

Counterpoint: Generations are largely made up. Everyone feels pain. Millennial presidents will be bad too (and that’s a promise you can believe in!). 

Maybe we mark the passing of time in big public events and pop culture because doing it on a small, personal scale is, frankly, even worse. I digitized a lot of VHS tapes of my family since my mom died. It’s fun. It’s sad. It’s really boring. I like seeing my mom. I like seeing us together. It doesn’t bug me. I do not like seeing my mom’s mom. That’s too sad. There’s one video from Christmas 1987. Not to brag, but that Christmas, my brother and I received a joint gift of a PeeWee Herman pull-string doll. Remember when I said I grew up privileged? Nail polish emoji.

So in that video, my mom gets her mom a sweater and explains why she bought it and when she thinks my grandma could use the sweater. But my grandma never used the sweater because she died the next month. I can’t think of my mom shopping for that sweater. And, like, wrapping it? And then explaining the gift? Only for her mom to die a month later? That’s too sad.

In another video, from the Spring of 1988, my mom is taking footage of her mom’s house for posterity. She is zooming in on things to try to remember them before the house is demolished. I can’t think about my mom’s mom dying. It makes me too sad for my mom. My mom shouldn’t have had to go through her mom dying. There’s a photo of the three of us on the porch, just before my grandma died. I can’t look at it. Why did the three of us only get five years together? Why the hell were all the years during the Reagan administration? Could we at least have chosen which five years? Who’s in charge here — just nobody?

When Trump won and I called my mom I was calling a woman whose mom was dead. I didn’t think about it then, but I do now. The optimism she felt in 1992, she did that even when her mom was dead. She did a lot of living through history without her mom. She didn’t have a choice. I can relate to that. 

I was so relieved when my dad got his vaccine, but my brain (so often my nemesis) couldn’t help but think “when is my mom getting hers?” She’s not. Because she doesn’t know what about Covid. Because she died in 2018.

Covid’s just one big thing I’ll experience without my mom. There will be more. But what if next time -- and I’m just spitballing here -- it’s something positive. 

Either way, after the next car, I’m running.