I is for irony

Taking a walk with a friend on Tuesday, I mentioned how I couldn’t remember the last time I had been sick.

Oh Niels, you silly, silly man, toying with fate like that.

The good news is that it doesn’t seem to be coronavirus. Christina and Emma got tested at the clinic on Wednesday and they both came back with negative results. And, since they’re the two members of the family who venture out the most and the furthest from home base, it seems likely (though not a guarantee) that if something contagious were to enter Casa Sorrells, they might be at the forefront. Also, let’s be real, if something does get in, we’re all going to get it.

In order of least-affected to most-affected, we would be:

• Noah, who seems to have no ill effects whatsoever;
• Me. I’ve been grouchy and anti-social, and felt what could be described as a mild head cold or maybe allergies, but I’ve been pretty functional;
• Christina, who has felt pretty rough; and
• Emma, whom, if you told me she had the coronavirus, I would believe you. She’s been pretty out of it.

So, given the fact that the two sickest came up negative, that feels like we’re on the safe side. Still, it makes a person think. We barely see anyone and wear masks all the time, and a cold somehow still snuck in. It makes you realize that it’s really only a question of luck, on some level, whether you get the executive pandemic treatment or not.

We don’t know if the church visit was the start of the cold misery. It seems unlikely. We gave ourselves a battery of quick tests in the week after that, and it was only nine days later that Emma first complained of a sore throat. That seems like a long incubation period. But it does fit in the general irony of things that that day was also Emma’s birthday, so we started with a general feeling of optimism that enough time had elapsed since the church superspreader sacrament service that things might be normal. We even let her invite a friend over. And then we got to spend three days worrying that maybe we’d been Ground Zero for a coronavirus outbreak.

I suppose this is all only tangentially related to Colin, so maybe this is a sign that the blog is slowly becoming less about dealing with his loss and more about dealing with my life after him. But there is the reality that, the longer this pandemic lasts, the more it makes me think of him. Every time I worry I’ve been exposed or feel a tickle in my throat, I wonder if it might be the coronavirus and if I might be one of those unlucky people who succumbs to it. Let’s be clear: I don’t want to succumb. I’ve got things I want to do. But it is an odd feeling, going through this experience and simultaneously wanting to live, while also thinking “If it gets me, I get to stop living without him.” Best case scenario, I’m reunited with him on the next level.

It’s not a way I would have ever thought I would spend my time thinking, and yet there it is. Death has lost so much of its scare potential for me. That said, dying in pain and living on a ventilator for weeks not knowing if you’ll make it has no appeal for me. I’m now in the group of people who may apply for a vaccine appointment (which is not the same as actually getting an appointment) and have cleared with my doctor that, blood clot issues or not, I’m good to take whatever vaccine comes my way. Christina has her appointment for Wednesday, I’m working on getting mine. If they get them approved for kids 12 and older, we’re marching Emma to the doctor first chance we get and, when Noah turns 12 in 2022, he’s got a birthday surprise waiting for him.

But still, I wish I could go back to a point when death scared me properly, like it should.