I was living this pandemic in a virtual way, following the evolution of the data from my computer. Until a week ago it exploded in my face and everything became real: my father tested positive. They infected him in the hospital when he was about to be discharged due to another ailment. Died yesterday. I couldn't say goodbye to him.
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I was born in 1980. Those of my generation are hardened in crisis, in professional reinvention, in emigration. We balance on a smaller and smaller tile. But, privileged Europeans, we did not know anything about war. And of virtual duels, less. Thousands of families in half the world are being deprived of something that humans need to do since the world is world: say goodbye.
At the front there are not enough weapons. Like the squad that cleaned Chernobyl, 34 years later many of our toilets are going to work without protection. A few weeks ago we received images of corpses piled up in China and of nurses with anxiety attacks due to lack of resources; Today they are Italian professionals with trash bags on their feet and French doctors begging for someone to send them decent masks: the few they have are like strainers. Spanish doctors who take it for granted that they and their colleagues are infected, but how can they not double one more turn.
This, let us not forget, is also a long-distance race against dehumanization. We are going to spend months watching chaos from our screens. We will have all the emotions on demand and we can disconnect from them when we want. At the same level, advice against boredom, jokes, declarations of love and condolences. We will have to filter so that all this noise does not leave us deaf and we can continue to discern and prioritize.
There is no tragedy without catharsis. When all this is over, we will fill the squares and run cross country until our legs hurt. We will explain to our children that this parenthesis of unreality also brought good things, because adults are there for that, to look for them.
We will celebrate being alive and give each other what the dead have not had: hugs and skin. I love you Papa. That I'm going to wrap myself up and I'm not going to lose my glasses. We were not prepared for this war.
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