I miss the hug more than I ever imagined

His wife of 55 years, who had fought her cancer so bravely for three years, was sitting on the couch, her gaze fixed through halfopened eyes. Her breathing was nearly imperceptible, like a whisper.

He knelt down to look at her, to hold her hand, to say goodbye — tears streaking down his cheeks and ours too. Our team counseled and blessed, but we couldn’t embrace him. COVID-19 restrictions kept us at bay.

We held his grief and his gratitude for our support, but we couldn’t hold him.

As a chaplain with Mission Hospice in San Diego, I miss the hug.

I’m reminded again of what COVID-19 has taken away from us. It has stripped away a multitude of cherished things we buried in normalcy or hid in plain sight amid our breakneck paces and digitized complacencies.

But amazingly, by doing so, it gave us a contrast experience of epic proportions. It exposed all that we were inattentive about. What I’ll remember most about this unusual year is how it revealed how much I took for granted pre-pandemic and how it invited me into greater, sustained appreciation.

The experiences that have lain fallow because of the pandemic have allowed a new season of appreciation to gestate, to reveal the everyday preciousness and sacredness that we forget most of the time. What has been taken away is stored in our memories and we will celebrate it and its forgotten rhythms when the pandemic is over.

I hope to never take a hug for granted, or a shared meal, or a packed concert hall, or simply seeing someone’s unmasked face.

None of us would have chosen COVID-19 to happen. But all of us can choose what we will take out of this tragic year.

I want to keep caring for people as I’ve been called to do. I want to do the best with what I have, and at the same time take stock of what I miss.

I want that to inspire my heart to be full of gratitude. And I want that gratitude to guide my life, even when the pandemic is a distant memory.

I’ll hug to that.

Chris Sikora, Carlsbad

for the schadenfreude freaks glued to the TV news watching the hurricanes, floods, fires, tornadoes and blizzards destroying the rest of the country.

Tom Dresselhuys, Carmel Valley