QUARANTINE
Some of you may know that I participate in a weekly word project on Instagram with a couple of friends called #thiswordthisweek. it’s a bit of a fun thing that we do to help us get through the photographic dry spells. But most importantly in this time of Covid-19, it’s become, at least for myself, a reason to still take pictures.
The word this week is Quarantine, a word everyone is all too familiar with. My first thoughts were to put our masks on and take some pictures of Alice and myself at home, try to make a statement about our hardships. But let’s face it, I go to work everyday, I get to walk outside and go to the market when I need to. It maybe a hardship of sorts but I’ve not been completely isolated. This is not the case for my mother Ann who is 91 years old, who’s been quarantined for the best part of ten months.
This story is not dissimilar to sons and daughters around the globe who have elderly parents. Isolation, fear, loneliness, boredom are words that describe what I’m sure my mother goes through every single day. Her friends are now mostly deceased, her ties are with the few that remain, her sisters and her children.
Her universe is the television and her large print books. She says she is okay but will also admit to the dark parts of being much on her own and no longer being a part of the outside world as before. She misses Sunday dim sum with Alice and her grandsons. She misses going to the mall and buying things that she doesn’t need. She misses her freedom. She misses her life.
My mother’s time cannot be counted in years and decades. Her time and her future are now. We visit every week and bring her food. At the end of the meal is always something sweet, creamy and delicious. When she’s eating her beloved dessert, I believe she’s at her happiest and most content. Perhaps she’s time travelling to a place that is warm and sunny, full of family and friends. The enjoyment she gets out of it is a thing to behold.
The quarantine is not fair to people like my mother. In some ways I don’t think she fully understands what’s at stake when we visit. We keep our distance, we make sure that we’re as careful as possible. Of course simply by being there we are taking a chance, risking her life at the same time as we’re trying to give her back some of her life. Quarantine and Covid-19’s cruel irony.
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