Items

• 
  2021-09-15

  Going home party - HIST30060

  When the new Delta variant led Melbourne’s COVID cases to explode over the second half of 2021, smaller states looked set to shut borders with Victoria. Consequently, I had to leave my new home at in Melbourne to get back to Tasmania in late September. Not knowing when we’d all see each other again, my flatmates held a small party for me. We stayed up until 4am. This is a picture one of them took at the event.
• 
  2021-12-10

  Graduation

  Right when the pandemic was peeking in March me being a senior, thinking we had two extra weeks of spring break, and then realizing that everything went hybrid online and we were going to have a graduation and prom or nothing. This is important to me and my peers because we never really got to see each other for one last time properly.
• 
  2020-02

  Goodbye my friend

  They say losses come in threes but thank god mine came in two as for I wouldn't know how to live with another grueling loss. Everyone is okay everyone is having fun and out of nowhere I receive a text "Gisela died last night." I was stunned I was beside myself how can this happen? It surely couldn't be real I just talked to her yesterday, surely as the day went on the more the news started becoming real, people started posting their goodbyes and the tears started rolling, this was it I would never talk to my friend again. I would do anything just to bring her back and hear her laugh one more time.
• 
  2021-03-05

  Virtual Funeral

  This is my fourth virtual funeral in less than a year. Although covid has been around for about a year, it didn't really hit home until a few short months ago. Los Angeles has been hit hard, and being from a large minority group I have lost a few people close to me. The first was my best friend's dad, then his brother, then another friend's brother. The photo is of a funeral that I am currently watching. I grew up in a large church in Los Angeles, this beautiful lady very well knew in the Hispanic Pentecostal community. She watched me grow up, attended my sweet fifteen and my wedding. She had the biggest heart and loved God fiercely. She was my mom's good friend and in January she contracted covid, by the end of the month she was gone. I've quickly realized that the only thing harder than losing so many people in such a short time span is not being able to say goodbye.
• 2020-10-16

  COVID hospitals

  Throughout this pandemic, I understood the importance of wearing your mask, staying isolated and social distanced to help protect yourself and others. I hadn't been directly affected by COVID besides my work and school closing, but my health was great and I didn't need to worry about my safety regarding COVID. My mom on the other hand, was considered high risk. Being a cancer survivor, and having other medial issues stemming from surgeries and treatments, I did what I could to protect her. In October of 2020, she was admitted into MAYO Clinic ICU for surgery complications. I flew up the next day, and had to say goodbye with my dad. It was the hardest thing I've gone though in my almost 20 years of life. My mom was my rock, and the COVID precautions, although necessary and I understood them, made me angry. While saying goodbye, I had to put on what seemed like a hazmat suit. I had to wear a gown, gloves, mask, and face shield so that I could safely be by my moms side in her final hours. I am all for protecting everyone around me, and I understood the precations, but I was angry, not at the hospital or the nurses or doctors, but at the reality of the world. Due to COVID, I can't imagine the vast amount of people who aren't even allowed to be with their family members, and I am so eternaly grateful I was able to be with my mom, but I'm allowed to be angry, and I haven't let myself accept that yet. For now, I'll be working through my days one day at a time, and working through trying to not feel guilty that I was able to be with my mom when so many others weren't. I miss her everyday.
• 
  2020-11-11

  And She Never Got to Finish Writing......

  Because of Covid-19, I didn't get the normal senior year of high school experience. I never got to wear my prom dress, appreciate my last day of school, or even had a chance to say goodbye to the teachers who shaped me into the person I am today. I never got to participate in a senior prank, or use the money we've been raising since freshman year to use towards our senior BBQ and senior trip. I never got to say farewell to the people I've grown up with since middle school. Whether I was close with them or not, I would've liked to say goodbye considering I may not ever see them again. This pandemic never allowed me to close the book on my high school experience. No matter how old I get, I will always look back and feel like high school was something that was robbed from me.
• 
  2020-11-10

  Zenly recorded how many days without friends

  In March, our school announced remote teaching for the rest of the semester during the spring break. I was playing video games with my friends when the announcement came out and none of us could imagine it was the last time we will be in the same room. Immediately we started to plan on going back to home to China, we did not even say goodbye that night because we thought we were going to meet next semester or some time earlier. So we packed our things and left in rush, booked the earliest flight and tried to get home before the travel ban got stricter. Since then, Zenly recorded it's been 234 days that we haven't met each other. I miss the old days.
• 
  2020-05-30

  Having a Graduation during a Pandemic

  COVID-19 impacted my senior year from the beginning and certainly still today. In my final year before college, students are given multiple opportunities that because of COVID, I was not able to do. To name some, my March of the Living trip got cancelled, my spring break trip with my friends got cancelled, the rest of my senior year got cancelled and put on Zoom, my graduation was very untraditional, etc. I attended Miami Country Day School for the last 12 years and I was so excited to get to walk and get my diploma in my own graduation. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, things were extremely different. At first, my school had decided to postpone graduation until December or COVID was not a huge impact to everyone's life. However, everyone fought and it resulted to an untraditional graduation. My school hosted for us a "drive-in" ceremony on the Barry University's campus. The ceremony was outside, everyone was social distanced, and the cars with family were lined up around the ceremony stage allowing my class to celebrate as a community. All families would honk for their friends and families. I say this ceremony was untraditional because everyone was able to decorate their cars with everything associated with their new school for the next 4+ years. I was extremely upset when I found out my graduation was going to be this way but it was by far one of the most special moments in my life. Even though I did not get the same graduation as everyone in the past years, I know that my high school did everything they could to make that moment extremely special because they know all the opportunities that we lost due to COVID-19.
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  2020-10-14

  Reflections on Exchange and the Pandemic

  I wrote this article in October 2020, 7 months after I was forced to return home early from my university exchange semester in Edinburgh. Shared with my friends on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the article put it into words thoughts and feelings that had been on my mind for the previous 7 months. In it, I tried to capture how my last few days in Edinburgh felt: the rapid pace of COVID closures, the sudden goodbyes, the panic about travel plans and illness. Writing the article was an enormously cathartic process, and helped me process the confusing mix of emotions that I'd felt since returning to Melbourne. It is, far and away, the most complete summary of my experience of the pandemic that I can offer.
• 
  2020-03-24

  Virginia School teacher hugs student goodbye before school closures – Henrico County, Virginia

  Sara Black, a teacher at Glen Lea Elementary School is shown hugging students before they board a school bus. Due to school closures for at least 14 days, it is assumed that she is saying goodbye as they are unsure when they will see each other in person again.
• 
  2020-05-07

  JBL

  One day I was sitting in Central Park. I was saying goodbye to my friends who were leaving for college. We were also there to celebrate my friends birthday. I remember the bittersweet vibe like it was yesterday. My friend gave me her phone and told me to queue song I thought fit the situation. There were so many to choose from. With the power of music, it was able to lift people up and remember the times we all had together.
• 
  2020-05-24

  Enjoy your memorial bbq

  When I saw an image of this front page on the internet, I thought it was from 100 years ago. And then I got my copy. Every year on the date, the 3,000 victims of September 11th are read aloud at the World Trade Center. It takes 3 hours. If we were to read the names of each person who has died of Covid-19 so far, it would take over 4 days, without stopping. It would cover each Sunday issue for over the next two years. Today I read 1% of those names. Each of those names was allowed half a sentence to describe them. Half a sentence for a lifetime on the front page of The New York Times. I picked out some of my favorites: -“We called him the grand Poobah” -her backyard birds ate right from her hand -could fix almost anything -first black woman to graduate Harvard Law school -quick with his fists in the ring -her will was indomitable -he could spit a watermelon seed halfway across a double lot -agent who turned on the CIA -her favorite quote was ‘I am as good as you are, and as bad as I am’ -cancer survivor who lived as a deacon -nothing delighted him more than picking up the bill -saved 56 Jewish families from the Gestapo -could be a real jokester -thought it was important to know a person’s life story -maestro of a steel-pan band -saw friends at their worst and made them their best -engineer behind the first 200mph stock car -discovered his true calling when he started driving a school bus -made the best Baklava ever -emergency room doctor who died in his husband’s arms -leader in integrating schools -architect behind Boston’s City Hall -shared his produce with food banks and neighbors -family believed she would have lived the traditional Navajo lifespan of 102 years. -loved his wife and said ‘yes dear’ a lot -mother to a generation of AIDS patients -worked long hard hours and still made time for everyone -walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on opening day -liked his bacon and hash browns crispy -more adept than many knew -would stay awake the whole night shift because she didn’t want anyone to die alone -freed from life in prison -her last words were ‘thank you’ . . . Seven small towns I thought no one else had heard of. Six women who reminded me of my mother. Five people my age. Four holocaust survivors. Three 9/11 responders. Two couples who died together. One person I’ve met. And a 5 year old girl. They didn't get a funeral. They didn't get to say goodbye. I've been in my apartment for 71 days. I've cried four times. Three of those times, was while I read this. Have fun at your barbecue.
• 
  2020-05-15

  Melisa Perez, Dougherty Family College, HIST 115

  A friend of mine studied a broad here in MN, I had the privilege to get to know her during her senior year as a college student. With the whole pandemic, she wasn’t able to go back to her home country it was unknown when she will be able to return back. A week ago, she found out that today will be her chance to leave. Although we are both happy that she is able to go back home, it was sad to know that we wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to each other due COVID-19. Although it seems like she is just going back to visit her family, it studently hits me that we are actually living in a time like this. I really wish I was able to send her off and give her one last hug since we don’t know when we will see each other again. It’s not a goodbye, it’s a see you soon.
• 
  2020-05-09

  Class of 2020 Car Processional

  With the rest of the school year canceled at Sacramento’s McClatchy High School, the school staff is making sure that the class of 2020 doesn’t leave without fanfare. Students drove slowly through William Land Park, cars decorated and horns honking, as staff members dressed in the school’s red and white attire cheered and handed out signs for students to display in front of their homes. “These kids aren’t getting a ceremony, so we wanted to make sure we still celebrated them somehow. And it’s a chance for us to say goodbye since we won’t see them again at school. It’s so heartbreaking,” said a teacher.
• 
  2020-04-26

  Allison Cappello

  [Curator's Note]: A Personal Account during the Pandemic
• 
  04/01/2020

  Moving to Rock Hill

  I took this picture when my family moved into our new townhouse in Rock Hill. We had already planned to move to our new place before the COVID-19 outbreak, so we decided to follow through with our plan. This photo of my bedroom was taken shortly after we moved in, which explains why my room is filled with boxes and other stuff. While our move still went on as scheduled, our packing process was somewhat disrupted by COVID-19. Because we are practicing social-distancing, none of our friends or extended family were able to help us pack and upload during our move. My mother was the most upset by this because she wasn't able to say goodbye to any of her friends before we moved. Overall, our move has been successful, but COVID-19 has prevented us from exploring our new city and neighboring areas.