Slow pace of vaccinations in Sask. being questioned
There's silence instead of music and joy since pandemic altered life in the home
As Saskatchewan navigates the pandemic, the Leader-post offers a view through the eyes of people on the journey, in 350 words or less.
The second of five in a new series by Brandon Harder, today's entry comes from Jean Currie, who was interviewed in May.
Jean Currie's home is the kind folks will say she's in, not at.
But the staff are wonderful, and the pandemic restrictions have loosened a little, which is nice. It was lonely, eating by herself in her room.
She misses the music, though. She liked to sing the old songs with the other residents before the virus put a stop to that.
Music moves her, even if she doesn't move like she used to, thanks to a broken vertebrae. She loved dancing, and her partner. She misses him, too.
“I don't think it was my cooking,” she jokes.
No, it was cancer that took her Cam.
Together they raised eight kids, and now she can't invite them into her suite. That's sad, but they can still visit at the front door.
“I don't really have a right to complain,” she says.
So she doesn't.
There's a lot of talk about the economy. She doesn't remember much about the Depression she was born into, but she knows why her parents hid a $20 bill in the back of the piano, and what it meant when the mice found it.
Jean has faith, as a lifelong Catholic, but there's talk of a “second wave” and she hears about death on the news.
“There must be some pleasant things that are happening,” she says.
In the war years, the news was about death, but the war spared her family.
The ones in the camps weren't so lucky. She's reading a book about them — the prisoners.
There are soldiers in seniors homes out east now, and the world is worried about people like Jean. Jean is worried about the world. Not hers, but the one her children will have to live in. What will it be like for them?
She doesn't know, so she doesn't dwell on it.
The doctor says she has a little aneurysm in her brain. She doesn't dwell on that either.
Why should she?
Her granddaughter is getting married next summer, and she fixes on being there.
With the help of her sons, she's going to manage a waltz.