Lockdown is hard, but Kiwis are lucky
Lois Galer, of Dunedin, has one overriding belief as New Zealand waits to emerge from the Level 4 lockdown: ‘‘we are sooooooo lucky!’’
Covid 19: Level 4, lockdown, soon to have the big question answered: Will the figures showing a reduction in the number of cases be enough to move us all to Level 3?
All fingers are crossed that the worst will soon be over and we, the lucky ones like us who have so far remained well and free of the dreaded virus, will be let out of our houses so we can begin (the operative word) to enjoy the world we have all worked so hard for and resume a nearnormal lifestyle.
It may still be pie in the sky stuff — the figures on the day and the nearnormal stuff — but if we have to, we’ll just bide our time a little longer in lockdown and be grateful we have a Government that does its homework and actually cares what happens to us. Not like elsewhere in the world.
Of late, when we’ve had our daily walk around the block and run out of projects around the house, we have taken to watching the BBC News. It is sobering stuff. There are scenes of mass burials — in the US of all places, where the perception has traditionally been glitz, glamour and perfect families. They are digging trenches with bulldozers into which hundreds of (most of them) unnamed souls are loaded, coffin by coffin, before being covered up.
The BBC then takes us to Ecuador, to horrific scenes of dead bodies lying across footpaths and in gutters. Noone seems to know who they are and some have been there for days, covered with a tarpaulin or blanket. One woman said there were 14 bodies she knew of in her apartment block, including someone’s parents who had been dead for a week. The smell, she said, was unbearable.
We then switch to Italy, France and other European countries where you see pallid faces peering from windows in highrise apartments.
Turning off the TV, we look at each other and say: We are sooooo lucky!
And we are. We have what most New Zealanders have: a home; a garden to potter about in and enjoy the sunshine; friendly neighbours, who regularly check up on us, and we them; and grownup kids who are all too eager to shop for us and make sure we’re OK, despite working from home and supervising their own kids in the same bubble.
Yes, it has seemed a long haul for us and many other formerly independent couples capable of almost anything, but handicapped right now due to being in the over70 age group in lockdown. How we would love to book a winter break to somewhere warm; shoot up to Central Otago for a few days to catch up with friends; meet friends and family for lunch or a coffee; join a few fellow retirees for drinks at the club on a Friday night . . .
All of this we and hundreds of others can only dream about for now and however long this virus decides to make its presence felt. But — again — we are so lucky . . . lucky to be alive and most of all, lucky to be Kiwis, living in what so many regard, both here and overseas, as the lucky country.