Hell We Should Never Forget

by Bob Salzman

(From The Corona Chronicles, an anthology of essays about 2020 and Covid edited by Andrew Lenoir, published in 2022 by Ellipsis Rare Books)

My late mother was five years old during the pandemic of 1918. She
never forgot the sight of a horse-drawn wagon piled with bodies passing her window in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This year I often thought of what that terrified little girl saw and the haunting similarity between the street scenes of a frightened population in masks then and now.

In 2020 a defenseless planet was invaded by an invisible deadly monster, mercilessly taking lives, destroying economies, and forever changing the way we live.

There are images of this year that will never leave me, especially from March and April, when the wail of ambulance sirens seemed endless. There was the line of gurneys with sick patients that ran out to the sidewalk in front of the Elmhurst Hospital Emergency Department. Workers in hazmat suits used forklifts to slide bodies into refrigerator trucks in hospital parking lots. Nurses and doctors tearfully struggled to describe holding phones for dying patients saying goodbye to loved ones.

2019 was the first year of retirement for my wife and me. It was supposed to be a year of liberation from the world of 9–5 with a significant loss of income for my dry cleaner. Retirement plans were derailed as my mother-in-law and father-in-law both went into medical nose dives. We were dragged into the maws of the
health care system and we found ourselves setting up and running a hospice in the house my wife grew up in.

Her parents spent the 73rd year of their marriage dying at home within three months of each other at ages 100 and 101. In the year of the pandemic, we now experience recurring waves of tragic gratitude for their timing.

On Friday March 29, I found myself weeping in the lobby of our
apartment building with the super as he told me that our beloved doorman’s 31-year-old son had just died of the virus. In a 2:00 a.m. call, he told his dad he was feeling a little better. At 4:30 a.m., the recently married young man died, alone. Now when I say hello to the wonderful guy who watched my children grow up, the sad eyes of a broken man stare back at me.

A pandemic cloud hung over every life event. For years I had been
hocking a gifted guitar-playing friend with a beautiful voice to do a concert. In June, he finally agreed to launch his retirement with a solo show. In July, his universe of adoring family and friends came together on Zoom from all over the country and the world for an hour performance. It was chicken soup for our Covid battered souls.

A month later my friend died, suddenly and inexplicably, at home.
At a size-limited, distanced funeral we wept at his graveside, unable to embrace.

In this year of darkness, there were also events that affirmed life, the way flowers bloom through cracks in pavement. One of my daughters and her fiance had to postpone their 2020 wedding. On the flip side of the same coin, they were able to buy a home of their dreams in the Hudson Valley. They went to contract just before the house would have become unaffordable, as New York City dwellers fleeing for upstate counties caused real estate prices to explode.

In April, my wife and I met our other daughter and her husband at
Jones Beach for a Coronavirus “new normal” outdoor dinner. As we sat in our distanced beach chairs, she told us she was pregnant, and our first grandson was due in November.

On September 15, I had just started a weekly 6 p.m. Zoom call with
four buddies when I saw my son in-law’s name on an incoming call. I said, “Got to go” and grabbed my phone to hear that my daughter had gone into premature labor just short of 33 weeks.

At 1:06 a.m., 4 lb. baby boy Adi was born. The year of Covid was now the year we became grandparents. In normal times we would have immediately raced to see the baby. Hospital rules barred visitors and only one parent at a time was allowed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Over the course of the next four weeks, with each photo and progress update we got less and less worried. A month later Adi came home, and all is well.

While he was in the NICU I wrote my new grandson a letter for him to read someday.

Dear Adi,
On Wednesday, September 16, 2020, at 1:09 a.m. you were ready
to get things going ahead of schedule and arrived in the world. Let me tell you something little guy — since then you have been putting big smiles and tears of joy on a lot of faces.

We haven’t been able to come see you because of this thing called
the Covid pandemic. Someday you are going to read about it and how it changed the world. We have been soaking up the reports and pictures from your Mom and Dad as we all watch you get bigger and stronger each day. One thing is obvious — you are a beautiful, determined, and focused little boy.

As I started to write this welcome to the world love letter it quickly became clear that there is a list of things that you and the other kids in bassinets all over the world will have your hands full dealing with -the warming of the Earth, a cavernous and cruel gap between haves and have-nots and an infestation of bigots victimizing the powerless. I’m so sorry my generation didn’t do a better job.

One of the things about aging is that you get to watch the pendulum of history swing between light and darkness. It’s often hard to know how dark or light it is until a few years later. In less than a month, there is going to be a presidential election that will determine whether the world you are entering will be getting darker or brighter.

In 2016, for reasons that I will never understand, a hate-filled despicable old man without a brain, heart, or soul became the President of the United States. When you are trying to make sense of this you should probably read about a man called Joseph Goebbels, a TV show called the Apprentice, a network called Fox News, and an outdated relic of history called the “electoral college”.

For the next few weeks, we will all be clinging to a dream of sending
this monster back under the rock he crawled out from. If he gets re-elected a lot of people will be reading up on Canadian immigration rules.

When I am feeling despair about all of this there is something that
gives me hope. A generation of angry, dedicated young people, of all colors and walks of life have been organizing and taking to the streets together because they care about racial and economic justice and the survival of the planet. I’m counting on them to push the pendulum of history back towards a world with a shared commitment to human decency for you and all the other babies now in maternity wards everywhere.

With more love and joy than I can express — welcome Adi!
I can’t wait to get down on the floor and play with you.
Grandpa Bob