REFLECTIONS
CORONA'S MEMORIES
AUTHOR Teresita Bacani-Oropilla, MD
In every person’s life are memories that
remain forever, with attendant emotions
of joy, fear, love and relief. One of mine
is of a young father home from surveying
and partitioning parts of the jungles of
Mindanao, Philippines, for future towns
and cities. He always entertained his two
little girls with this ditty: “Ding dong bell,
pussy in the well, who put her in? Little Tita
bream! Who put her out? Little Jo trout! What a naughty girl was
that to drown my little pussy cat!”
He always had to do it over with the names reversed, or face a
pandemonium of protest from his sweet innocents.
Another is that of an aging Navy veteran of World War II who
after floating for days in a relentless sea, never knowing if he would
survive his ship’s destruction, sees a rescue ship at last. Such relief
and new life: he told the story as if watching a movie.
We read of families of farmhands of old, waiting to see who
among their children would survive the yet incurable diphtheria.
What agony, with no vaccines for anything.
And among us still are those who joyously recall the end of
WWII, the proclamation of peace at last, the shouting and the
dancing in the streets, for war no more.
In the future, today’s parents will have proud memories of their
children’s college graduations, their entrance into the adult working
world. They will remember virtual ceremonies, hooding their
kids in the front yard or hotel room, only ten in attendance and
the virus ever-hovering.
Graduating high school students will one day mourn the loss
of their honored rituals, proms, parties and Senior Week, with
“Now what?” on everyone’s lips.
What else will be the memories of people of this unprecedented
new plague, the COVID-19 pandemic? We’d been enjoying the
benefits of our supposedly prosperous, electronically connected
world. We’d reveled in our freedom to think, to speak, to worship,
to protest, to do what we wanted, anytime, anyplace. We thought
ourselves invulnerable and free.
Could we have been too free? What happened?! Within a few
months, our materially proud and querulous world was struck
down by an appropriately named microscopically tiny virus –
Coronavirus, the “CROWN” that brought us to our knees. It has
ruled our actions, our economies and our ways of assessing what is
important in our lives. It has felled us by the millions.
Sadness has prevailed. We are filled with angry grief as our
loved ones linger and die alone in supposedly safe retirement
homes. We have instantly had to change our priorities and promises.
Our centers of learning, from the innocent, tender nursery
schools, to the prestigious institutions that have produced many
of our leading thinkers, are closed up tight. Necessities have been
redefined, and pleasures must be reinvented inside our four walls
(if we are lucky enough to have them still).
We have been mandated to stay in our homes, but I thought
- surprise! - isn’t that where we were supposed to be anyway?
Have we now, belatedly, gotten to know our own families in the
flesh, not just from texting? We may have discovered each other’s
strengths and weaknesses, the better to enhance or correct them.
Has the CROWN opened our eyes to what goes on around us?
Has it made us more generous as we see and experience the plight
of those in need? Has it taught us that we can get by without things
we once considered indispensable? Has it taught us at last that,
“We can’t take it with us?”
For sure the CROWN’s reign will deeply imprint our memories
and our hearts. May many of its changes wrought be good
ones.
Dr. Bacani-Oropilla is a retired psychiatrist.
JUNE 2020 33