THIS UNFORGETTABLE YEAR I’LL ALWAYS FEEL THIS HOLE IN MY SOUL
2020 will always be known as the year a brutal pandemic changed the world. But it didn’t impact everyone the same way. What will you remember most about 2020? Members of our editorial board and The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Community Voices Project answer
One year ago on New Year’s Eve 2020, we had our own little party in the sala. We ate grapes at midnight, toasted with sparkling juice and watched the big ball drop in Times Square on TV. We called our family in different time zones. The freshness of a new beginning lingered in the air, but it didn’t last long.
By February, the novel coronavirus starting making headlines as people around the globe started getting sick. And it was making its way here to the U.S. and San Diego, like a spreading wildfire.
We were forced to stay home, and reexamine our lives and our country’s response to racial injustice and political divisiveness.
In August, my dad, 80, who lives in a small town in Illinois, and has underlying health conditions, informed me that he and my stepmother, tested positive for COVID-19. I was numb. He sounded horrible on the phone, coughing so hard he couldn’t speak for more than two minutes. For weeks, I lay at night praying to myself, tears silently rolling down from my eyes. I could not imagine my life without my papá. Slowly, he rode out the storm, never hospitalized.
Then another call two weeks later, I learned from a friend that one of my closest friends was in the hospital in Chicago with COVID-19, on a ventilator. I gasped. “Which hospital?” “Don’t bother calling or texting, he’s in a coma.” It just could not be true. Not my amigo Eugene Stanback! A 40-year veteran news photographer who didn’t even get to enjoy his retirement. He cheered me on my entire career. He helped me make my first demo reel and found time to see me when I went back home to visit.
I looked at my phone. Our last text was July 24, when we wrote back and forth about coronavirus, telling each other to be safe. Now here I was, 2,000 miles away, left with images of him fighting for his life.
I reached out to Eugene’s daughter. She promised to read my text messages of hope and faith to him. He fought for several more weeks but on Sept. 13, he took his last breath. To this day, it’s all surreal. My dad and stepmom recovered fully, but it was a slow process.
I refuse to let my dad or Eugene simply be statistics on the nightly news. I’ll always feel that hole in my soul that the families of more than 341,000 people who died in this country are feeling with the loss of a loved one.
Now here we are, 2021. We have new vaccines, and there is hope. Yet my husband just lost his tío, Renato López Olivera, to COVID-19 two weeks ago in Mexico, where the situation is grim.
Still, I’m trying to find those glass half full moments of 2020. In March, I joined the The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board and its Ideas & Opinion Team, just days before the Union-Tribune sent everyone home to work remotely. It’s been a challenge and a blessing.
This year has certainly been one of serious ref lection for me. It’s like a cleansing of the soul I didn’t ask for. I listen to lyrics of songs which have so much more meaning now. Songs like “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas and “Puño de Tierra” by Ramon Ayala.
It’s hard to see so many suffer. But it’s a second chance for all of us to make a profound difference with kindness and gratitude.
We have a new vaccine, and there is hope. Yet my husband just lost his tío, Renato López Olivera, to COVID-19 two weeks ago.
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