I have asked around. The same question every time. To every one I know. I write it in a dramatic way because the answers were unanimously dramatically bad. No, we will not regret 2020! 2020 was an awful year. 2020 was the bottom of every ones life. 2020 is a cursed year, no doubt. It is extremely rare that humanity is affected as a whole from something awful. Am I mistaken in saying that the last worldly catastrophic event was the second world war? No continent was untouched.
Pandemic. I’ll remember that word! I never thought I would understand the weight and severity of it. I never thought I would have to explain it to my kids. I was hoping it would stay in the pages of history books like the plague or the Spanish flu (which, by the way, I had no idea it had been so lethal). Pandemic is something nobody will ever treat lightly for a few generations. It has left very serious wounds in our society.
Every one I know has a story related to Covid-19. A real story, something that has affected them deeply. It’s a neighbor, a co-worker, a family member. And sometimes it’s about the health and the miracle recovery, and I like those stories that end well. But sometimes the outcome is not so good: People staying with ailment that will last for years to come, or, even worse, a funeral with almost no crowd because of social distancing. A lot of those horror stories also contain a professional twist. Someone losing their job. Someone who can’t pay their employees anymore when, just a year ago, their business was doing fine.
And these are the stories that every one report because they are all around us. But there are a lot of things people do not talk about. The parents trapped at home, obliged to find a spot in their house to be able to work online. The parents who have young children that are climbing up the wall because they are so fed-up of being cooped-up. The parents that have to supervise their children while trying to pull a day’s work. The parents of graduating teenagers with no prom, no ceremony, no crowds, no music to celebrate the passage to adulthood. The parents who can’t use the parks and swimming pools of our city in the summer. Yes, I think a lot about the parents of our world. I think that it’s especially difficult for them. They are vulnerable to any social situation that doesn’t go well for their children. “Pandemic” is a social word, a very bad one.
2020 will be a year we will all remember. Just at the end of it, we got a little hope when they announce the vaccine, when they started to distribute it. But, for the most part, this was a year we were all in the dark, oblige to face forces that were bigger than us. I hope you all made it all right out there. And I can say that this year we will all be happy in a very special way to welcome the new year. 2021: the hopeful one.