A Covid Update
April 18, 2020
Happy Easter everyone! I know you will be reading this in May, but for me it is Bright Week (the week after Easter Sunday). One of the phrases we say on Easter is “He is risen,” to which the other person responds, “He is risen, indeed.” It is usually a time of joy and happiness. For those who are religious, it is a day to commemorate our Lord and Savior defeating death and living again. For those who do not observe the religious part of Easter, it is a feast day. Either way, it is a day to celebrate! But this year, there is very little to celebrate, and even more to mourn. For this week’s post, I want to talk about the strange Holy Week I had during these unusual times. I also want to let you know there is a content warning for death, loss, and Covid-19 news in general. If these are things that might affect you, feel free to skip this post. Otherwise, please proceed with caution.
Last week was Holy Week, a time that is usually an exciting time for me. Honestly, it is my favorite time of the year. The songs, the services, the significance, all of it holds fond memories for me. It is the holiday I look forward to every year, Thanksgiving weekend is a close second. But this year, in light of the chaos going on in the world, it really did not seem all that bright or exciting. On Lazarus Saturday, we normally get up early in the morning to make kozhikotta, which are these sweet dumplings made of rice flour and filled with jaggery. We would make them from scratch, and it would be a whole family affair. The end result would be about 50 or so undas (balls) that we would share with friends and family for the next couple of days. Instead, this year, we heated up some frozen kozhikotta we bought at the Indian store. There was no point in making them from scratch this year because, at minimum, there would have been about 15-20 undas. Between my diabetic parents and myself, I would end up eating the majority of them. It is simply easier to warm up a packet of six and call it a day.
What follows is Palm Sunday, a day when the pews are filled by the congregation. There are palm leaves in everyone’s hands and flowers in everyone’s hairs. The chorus of the hand bells, the brass bell, the bells on the fans, and the bells of the censor echoes within the church during the veneration of the cross. Instead, this year, it was just the priest and his family conducting the service at church, which was live streamed so the congregation could watch from their living rooms.
While I am grateful we live in an age when we have the means of still connecting with each other even though we are miles, sometimes states or countries, apart, a year like this never crossed my mind. In my wildest imagination, I would have married out of Orthodoxy; I would not be able to attend any of the Holy Week services because I would be attending the equivalent service of my new denomination. Sure, it was an unlikely scenario, but very much a possible one. Regardless, never in my dreams did I think I would be in my home during this week.
Pesaha (Passover) is one of the highlights of Holy Week because my whole family gets together on a Thursday and has a special appam. “Appam” is a hard word to define because it is a catch-all term for a variety of foods prepared in a variety of ways, but in this context it is a type of steamed rice flour cake. But since getting together is not allowed right now, we held a Zoom Pesaha. Everyone made the appams in their own home, and we came together for the call. My mom says it is a way for us to keep up the tradition, but I think it is us trying to find normalcy. Ironically, I was so confident, back in February, that things would have died down by Easter. Boy was I wrong about that. Easter came and went, thankfully uneventful. It is weird, but I think we are starting to settle into the idea that this is our new normal.
Now comes the part I really did not want to write about, but it would be a grave injustice if I did not write about those who are sick and who have died. It boggles my mind that there are people out there claiming this virus is a government hoax, or that 5G is the cause of this virus; dismissing this as if it were nothing is so frustrating. I personally know people who have gotten sick. I know people who are currently in the hospital on ventilators, machines that breathe for them because their lungs are so weak. And as of today, I know two people who have died from this. There have been over 665,000 cases in the US alone. Who knows when this will end.
If you made it this far, thank you. I know this Covid post does not flow with the theme of this blog, but these were some thoughts I have been thinking about the past couple of weeks. I did not want to write too much this week because I was not really in the mood, so I will see you next week. I hope you all are well and staying safe.
- Aemi
