Today, I feel proper sad… I sit in Sheffield, outside student halls waiting for number 2 to collect the rest of her belongings. I’d managed to bring her home hours before lockdown began. I’d asked her if she’d gotten everything and she said she had. By everything, she thought I meant all that she’d need for a couple of weeks. It didn’t register with her that everything meant everything as she might not be going back this side of Summer.
My existence has not been much changed during lockdown, in many aspects it’s fair to say life has improved. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not oblivious to what’s going on… I work with people who work close to death. There are days when we’re all weary and struck silent by the latest death count… 13 in less than a fortnight in one home… As one of my passengers would say “Oh… My head is not good…”. Another would say “This is what you have to see when you choose to work in God’s waiting room”. Rightly or wrongly, we console ourselves in them being old, having had a good innings or even a blessing of sorts as they are released from what’s become a life of tedious bone aching pain…
I spend a lot of time worrying about students… I work with a lot of them, some as young as 17, many of them far from home, stranded in this foreign to them land, wondering if they’ll ever see grandparents again… And on darker days, they worry that their grandparents may outlive them…
Death has little respect for the natural order of things…
I sit in Sheffield… Usually a bustling hive, now turned ghost town… I’m in the thick of the student quarter and the absence of youngsters doesn’t feel good… I think back to my own student days… Free of cares and free of student loans…
I think charging our students for their education is the biggest injustice this country has ever served… Short sighted penny pinching stupidity… I’ve read cards for thousands of students and even before all of this, a lot of them carried the weight of the world on their shoulders… Way too serious before their time… An epidemic of anxieties… Concerns about finances and property ladders and will I even get a job after all of this…
Now we have lockdown and it robs them again… It saddens me that I see so much potential in youth and that right now, it is hard to see where that will go…
Though I’m heartened that they still have some humour and refer to this plague as the Boomer Remover…
Ain’t I the Debby Downer? Oh well, here’s to brighter days tomorrow!
The pure and blessed way 
Oh boy, the Boomer Remover. I can’t help but bust out laughing. It went from, “Ok, Boomer” to “Boomer Remover.” Well, that’s certainly a way to win the argument. We’re sorry, though today’s debate has been called for… Forfeit by Death.
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Yeah Boomer Remover makes me laugh every time, almost as much as the look on my lot’s little faces when they realised I’m Gen X and so they’re still not any closer to getting a foot on the property ladder 😂
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Yeah, Boomer Remover did occur to me. And it is funny, even under the circumstances. I am a Boomer (1957), so I am extra-cautious with this plague, but also very sympathetic to the younger ones whose life arcs are so affected when they have all their youthful energy intact. Of course since this little missive of yours, Karen, things have gotten even more interesting . . .
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Good to hear from you Joanne! When’s your deck due for release? I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Strange times with this plague… Very bittersweet with losses mixed with returns of old friends and healing energies… Yes, life is interesting and may it continue to be so for all of us…
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Bittersweet, exactly. RE deck: Waiting on Ania to get done with mask-making. She’s making bags for me and I need her price to finalize my pricing for the pre-orders. 🙂
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Oh! This just gets better and better! ❤️💫🪐⭐
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