My Mom Is Moving in the Midst of COVID-19 and I Can’t Help Her Lift One Box

A photograph my mother texted me final week nearly broke me. It exhibits 12 brown grocery luggage sure for the recycling middle. They’re full of copies of her beloved Veranda journal.

My mother has cherished this journal for so long as I can bear in mind. However once you’re packing up your home amid a worldwide pandemic, there’s no time to dwell on whether or not it’s best to hold your favourite shiny magazines.

She’s sustaining a stiff higher lip, this mother of mine, however I’d do something to have the ability to carry these luggage to the automobile for her and sit together with her in particular person, surrounded by containers, tape, bubble wrap, and reminiscences of fine occasions spent collectively in a house that may quickly be another person’s.

That was our plan earlier than the acceleration of COVID-19. After I spent a number of days together with her in February, I had no concept that it could be the final time I’d set foot within the sunny, snug residence my mother and father in-built New England 20-something years in the past. It’s the place my mother has been residing in alone since my dad died in 2007.

I do know I’m fortunate—she’s wholesome and arranged and whip-smart—however that doesn’t assist me really feel higher about the truth that she’s going to must make this transfer completely on her personal. She’s in her 70s, and is understandably involved about her personal publicity to the virus, although she lives in an space with a low variety of instances. It’s the proper time for her to downsize, however it’s onerous for it to really feel proper in the intervening time.

Like so many households, we’re making an attempt to determine how to deal with our every day lives being upended by the virus. However I’m right here in New York, and there’s simply no getting round serving to somebody who’s greater than 200 miles away transfer—particularly once you’re not supposed to come back inside six toes of one other particular person.

The excellent news is that in some way, regardless of this long-distance separation, we’re discovering methods to make it work. My mother has been texting me photographs and blueprints of her new place and I’ve despatched her photographs of some cheery outside furnishings that may perk up her new porch.

We proceed to alternate hilarious, and generally teary texts, together with photographs of furnishings I would need, excerpts from letters I wrote throughout summer season camp and faculty, and photographs of freshly picked daffodils to cheer me up as New York Metropolis’s confirmed coronavirus instances started to speed up.

As my mother went deeper into her cabinets, extra mementos emerged and had been then texted my method. We marveled over ‘60s-era playing cards she acquired upon graduating from regulation faculty that made our jaws drop (One priceless instance: ‘With curves like yours… who wants straight As’), a photograph of a ceramic angel given to my mother from somebody who thought she may want a little bit solace, never-before-seen outdated images, and a suggestion: ‘Would you like this Artwork Deco body?’ with an image of a favourite image body from her front room desk.

Nonetheless, whereas I’ve all the time believed that 4 partitions don’t make a house; that it’s the folks inside them that remodel a construction into that feeling you get once you stroll by means of the door; I’ve been shocked at how wrecked I’ve felt that I’ll by no means spend one other evening within the place my mother and father lived—and cherished—for half my life.

On the identical time, I do know that all of us must hold transferring. In my mother’s case, it’s a literal transfer. For others, it’s a profound sense of how a lot all the pieces has modified within the blink of a watch, and of all of the work we have to do to be higher towards one another.

As for me, I’m doing my greatest to show the web page and deal with the contemporary begin my mother is about to make. I can’t wait to convey her an armful of flowers—and a subscription to a brand new décor journal—when finally I get to throw my arms round her in her heat and welcoming new residence.