Eden in Lockdown, Senior Style

No Senior Art Exhibit Openings at OC Right Now!

So already, I didn't like the first sentence of my horoscope in today's Boston Globe:  "An elderly family member needs your help more than he or she is saying." Not a good thing to read in the era of coronavirus lockdown!

My parents both live at Orchard Cove, a Hebrew Senior Life facility in Canton. And currently, I can't visit either them: in accordance with the protocols put into place by Hebrew Senior Life and the mandates issued by the governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, there can be no visitors to Orchard Cove right now, except under the most serious of circumstances.

My parents live in two separate sections of Orchard Cove. We were going to celebrate their seventieth wedding anniversary last Sunday afternoon with a family party in the Cove Room, but, of course, that party had to be cancelled.

For the time being, my father can't visit my mother, and I can't visit either of them. How long this will last, and what questions I'll need to answer in order to be admitted when the "No Visitors" ban is lifted or modified, I don't know. But I will say that if I didn't have two nonagenarian parents in my life, I'd be less anxious about contracting coronavirus myself.

Needless to say, with each passing day, it becomes increasingly disconcerting not to be able to visit them, despite the wisdom of the ban. My father understands exactly what's going on. My mother sometimes does. 

As soon as I read my horoscope, I called both of my parents, and then the nurse on my mother's floor, since my mother didn't answer the phone. My dad informed me that one of friends who brings his own favorite kind of dry cereal to breakfast every morning wasn't worried about running out because he has five boxes of it in his room. The nurse on my mother's floor assured me my mother, who was having breakfast in the common dining space on her floor, was fine and usually did understand that everything was different right now--not just her.

So let me say what I'm grateful for at this moment.

• I'm so glad that a few weeks ago, my parents got to meet their first great grandchild--my niece's son. This was such a happy day for all of us--I met him for the first time that day, too. Thankfully this happened before all of us needed to stay home and stay away from Orchard Cove.  

• Since I'm the one who sets up my dad's medication boxes, I'm so glad that I'm always at least three weeks ahead in terms of keeping him stocked up: he has all the meds he needs for up until the middle of April. I'd thought we were preparing for the possibility of a blizzard that might temporarily separate us; not so.

• I'm so glad that the people at Orchard Cove are not only taking such good care of my parents and all the other seniors living there, but also communicating regularly about what they're doing to keep everyone as safe as possible. Thank you, Orchard Cove for keeping the world far away right now. And my parents and I have a constant topic of conversation these days: the latest protocols that have been put into place.

• I'm also so glad that the Orchard Cove staff is doing all they can to keep families connected in meaningful ways, most importantly by facilitating technological face-to-face communication between residents and their near and dear. Seeing people and not just hearing their voices seems to be making all of this separation just a little less intense.

• Finally, I'm so glad that the weather hasn't been an issue for us--although I'm thinking that the people in Tennessee who are still living much in response to early March's tornadoes probably feel otherwise. We've had some Massachusetts mid-Marches that were remarkable for their late-winter blizzards, or their gale-force winds and flooding rains--fallen power lines and underwater roadways. But not this year: God has been good!

Speaking of God, an email I received from my synagogue shared the reflections of our rabbi, Daniel Klein, as he contemplates what's being asked of us and given by us at this time:

'It is a profound sense of service. Our physical distancing is both self-protection and an offering to the people around us. It is a way of keeping others, particularly the most vulnerable among us, safe and the systems that care for people functioning and not overwhelmed. In the last few years, I have come to feel that the most essential statement of my work in the world is from the Shema":

 וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת הָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ
'Love God/Everything/Everyone/The One/The Oneness with everything you have"

'As we move through this experience, may we feel and be connected to others even as we are physically apart," . . . ."

I believe that few of the people who take care of my parents are Jewish, but I also believe that the good work of many of them reflects a spiritual as well as a professional commitment to serve. I think Rabbi Klein's words would resonate with many of them.

* COVID-19 Update 2 [E-mail to the author]. (2020, March 17). (from The Boston Synagogue)