Looking Back

One year, one year has passed. Who would have thought that the second week of march last year is the last week that we can live a normal life? No one. No one have expected it, no one has anticipated that a pandemic will happen. My memories of that week is still vivid. Sunday, I attended our religious meeting, Wednesday I still visited some of my deaf students and the week went on normally. No face masks, no face shield, no need to bring alcohol everywhere you go and the fare when you go somewhere is super cheap.

But everything changed in just a span of few days.  March 14, they declared a lockdown in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. March 15, local governments also stated that a hard lockdown will also be implemented in some provinces. It includes the province where I was located at. March 16, the total lockdown started here.

According to the Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief theory, people undergo five stages when undergoing hardship. So let me tell the story of how people here underwent those stages.

The first stage according to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, is denial. At first the residents in my neighborhood can't accept the fact that the pandemic have affected our lives as well. They keep blabbering every day that Covid-19 will never affect us because we are far from Wuhan, China where it started. Some people gather in front of my mom's sari-sari store (a mini grocery shop), every morning to talk about why there is a need for a hard lockdown. This went on for more than a week. 

Then, the local government unit became more strict in implementing the health and safety protocols, so all establishments are forced to close down for a while, people are totally confined at home, curfews are implemented. Kids are not allowed to play outside during the day and no one is allowed to get out of their houses starting exactly 8 pm until 5 am the next day. 

Here comes the second stage of grief - Anger. The fact that businesses were closed down and workers are no longer allowed to go to work even those who works in construction are no longer allowed to do so made a lot of people here enraged. Even my dad is complaining about it since he doesn't know how serious the pandemic is yet. Since our family has two places of residency, my dad is able to obtain two quarantine passes, and he can go back and forth from one town to another. But the thought of not being able to work the way he can before made him really mad. And it's the same with other heads of the family, they're wondering where they'll get the money to provide for their family's basic needs.

The next stage of the theory is bargaining. People finally understood how serious the situation is when the fatality rate went higher and higher each day. Even my dad who used to be against the implemented protocols learned that it's indeed serious. The government promised that relief packs will be given to all families to at least help them survive. People were quite thankful for that. 

Depression. But the relief pack only lasts for a few days, specially for bigger families. People started to feel depressed. Personally, I was feeling hopeless that time too. Every time I think about how an entire year will possibly be wasted. Anxiety has taken over me, I was thinking about the future, what's going to happen. My parents were very strict too, specially my dad so even though I'm technically an adult, they also don't allow me to go to town to shop for goods because among their children, I'm the most vulnerable when it comes to sickness. It's depressing not to be able to go to work, it's depressing not to see other faces. It's depressing that I don't even have a single penny to buy my needs because my savings is also used up.

Acceptance. But as time goes by, everyone seemed to have accepted the fact that there's no way we could immediately go back to 'normal'. During the time of the hard lockdown people learned to accept the bitter truth. They just tried to find ways to at least get by every day. People tried every possible way to fight depression. We did all sorts of things - learning a new skill, resorting to planting, trying out anything that's trending on social media. And since people from the nearby town are not allowed to go to our municipality to buy supplies, some resorted to exchanging money and goods at the borders of each town. And finally, next week, it will be exactly a year since the pandemic happened. Looking at the calendar makes me really nostalgic, the bitter memories because of this pandemic came rushing to me. But more than anything else, I'm thankful that my family and I are safe, alive and kicking up to this moment. 

I have four unfinished articles on my notes but I was motivated to finish this one instead because I was reminded of the hard lockdown when I looked at my gallery today. It's been weeks too since I last published an article. How are you all?

Lead image from: verywellhealth.com