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Collected Item: “A year of recovery”

Give your story a title.

A year of recovery

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

text

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

Our adult son died of cancer at the end of 2018. We were devastated. Our lives were disrupted and upended, while everyone else went on as if everything was normal. Anyone who has lost a family member or friend knows what this is like.

Way too many people found out in 2020 what that is like. In 2020, other people were inconvenienced. A lot. I’ll acknowledge that it was tough on everyone, but it’s nothing compared to losing a loved one. When we realized that the pandemic disruption really didn’t faze us, we realized that we were going to be OK. We had faced the unbearable; this was trivial by comparison. So was losing my job. We were privileged that 2020 and 2021 gave us a chance to reset, to recharge, to reboot. To make ends meet, I now work and live on another continent, away from my wife. It’s incredibly difficult. We’ve dealt with worse situations. We’ll be OK.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

stress, recovery, death

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

self

Give this story a date.

2020
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