The New Normal

After my husband passed I constantly heard the words “New Normal”. At first I hated those words. I didn’t want to get use to the new normal, I wanted my life back. My husband, my love, my rock, my best friend. That is not an option. Now everywhere you turn you hear those very words “New Normal” said a million times by news anchors and analysts. I am not the only one now having to learn about the new normal. How odd it is for me to have a jump on such a terrible thing. No one wants a new normal, we would rather go on with our lives as if nothing has changed. Yet watching the death toll from this virus screams new normal for thousands of families. 2020 will leave a scar on humanity like none other why? Because it has taken a race that believes they have everything under control that we are an advanced species, and it has taught us the exact opposite. We are not ready, we are not in control, and we are not as advanced as we thought we were.

This lesson comes at a terrible price and new normal will be something counselors will be talking about for years to come. We are losing our past, our history, why because we are losing those who hold that knowledge at such a rapid pace that we don’t even have time to speak to them to gain it. Once the disease has set in we can’t even call or be around that loved one. There are a lot of people unable to say goodbye, and that will hurt our society deeply. How do I know? I was hundreds of miles away from my husband when he passed. Yes I was the last person to speak to him ever, but our conversation was a normal one. The I love you the same one that was said every day. Never once in the time that I hung up the phone til seven minutes later when my daughter called, did I even think that was that last time I would ever hear his voice or get to say I love you. That has left a deep wound and it will be a huge scar. Yet this great tragedy that has happened to me has given me the ability and the clarity to deal with this virus. It has also given my children the ability to as well. How?

We have been through what to us has been the most tragic year of our lives. Yet we made it through with grace, with love, and grit. Saying it wasn’t easy is the understatement of the year. So when our government asked us to stay home and not go anywhere, we thought in the last year that has been the easiest thing anyone has asked us to do. We can do that. My children don’t complain too much about having to stay away from friends and family, why? They know death, they understand the finality of that word. There is no coming back from that. So while they do miss their friends, we still speak to them and to family members on the phone and we understand that, that is good enough. We are already living in the new normal, we have been for ten months now. It doesn’t scare us as much as we thought it would. We can do the things that are asked of us easily they seem like such an easy thing to do. We know that staying home is so much easier than saying goodbye to someone you love. That, that is asking too much, and we realize that asking someone else to say goodbye to someone they love is too much to ask of them. So we stay home.

As of yesterday the government asked us to stay another thirty days in our homes. We watch in horror as businesses are closed and people lose their jobs. Yes families and the American dream are being destroyed as we sit safely in our homes. A part of me wonders if I didn’t lose my husband so that I would be prepared for this. Not that I am 100% prepared because I am not sure what will happen should something happen to one of my children. But I am prepared mentally to stay home for as long as needed because I know death. I will watch my personal savings dwindle down to almost nothing should it come to that. It will because of where I work. While I can work from home the work won’t last forever, it too will eventually stop because the business will stop should we go past April. Yet I know that what we are doing is the right thing. I know all to well that deep desire of wanting time to quickly pass and all of this just be done and over with. I did that with grief. Yet what I have learned is this. There is no fast forward in life, time is time you cannot make it slow down any more than you can make it speed up. If you really want things to get on to the new normal, then do your part. Stay home. Don’t make someone’s last goodbye be over the phone, that is way too much to ask of anyone.

-Dee

Author: thejourneyofalioness

41 year old mother of four. Widow since May 2019. Lives in a small Northern Oklahoma town. Loves to be out in nature and photography. "Life is not meant to be lived inside." View all posts by thejourneyofalioness