The photos on my phone were littered with bad shots, silly pictures, junk that seemed meaningful at the time but now just steals away memory space. I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the photographic house. In the process I took a walk down memory lane and it was quite lovely and nostalgic. Then I reached the pictures from 2020 to the present and things began to change. 

There were fewer and fewer images of other people and the ones of me and my husband often featured the two of us wearing masks. I was reminded of the clever trips that we took using our trailer so that we would not have to interact with other folks who might make us sick. I marveled out our ingenuity in keeping ourselves sane during the horrible pandemic time but I also began to recall how lonely and isolated we had all felt. We kept ourselves virus free but we also lost friends and acquaintances both to Covid and because of our political differences. Death and sorrow seemed to hover over the time like a shadow that not even our forced optimism was able to overcome.

As I scrolled closer and closer to the present day I encountered photos of loved ones who have died in the last couple of years. The photos seemed to serve as evidence of just how much our lives have changed. The ranks of our friends and family members are thinner now. Even those who remain are less inclined to invite us to meet with them or come to their homes. Gone are the celebrations of life that jumped from the smiling faces before 2020. Our isolation lingers not so much because we are still afraid of bringing illness into our home but because so many seemed have lost interest in entertaining. Even our trailer has sat unused for two full years. 

I have to admit that I found myself wishing that I had never embarked on the attempt to make more sense of my photo library. The most recent years have left me feeling as though very important people are missing in my life for one reason or another. Some have died and I admit to missing them terribly and wishing to have just a few more minutes with them. Some decided after years of friendship that they no longer felt comfortable with my political views. Others became incredibly busy trying to reconstruct life after the pandemic. Now I mostly stay in touch through phone calls and text messages but rarely see them in person. Even my attempts to create reasons to get together have all too often fallen apart. 

I sense that the worldwide pandemic left a kind of worldwide mental breakdown in its wake. We humans are having a difficult time adjusting to the massive losses and interruptions in our lives. We seem to be trying to act normal but somehow it isn’t working as well as we had hoped. The sadness and anger that arose during that time has left a residual goo that resulted in less trust in so many of the societal bulwarks that once made us feel so secure. It is as though there was also a kind of worldwide earthquake that created vast shifts and chasms that we have yet to overcome. 

I wish that I knew what to do. I know that it is impossible to go back and have a redo based on the knowledge of hindsight. We just have to deal with the realities of the situation but so many of us feel a bit helpless in knowing how to begin. Nonetheless the photos or lack of them gave me some important clues. 

If we start with the youngest among us we should see that they have not experienced important milestones in their development that we all need. Their schooling was interrupted. They lost opportunities to to grow together. They watched their elders fighting with each other rather than working together in a spirit of cooperation that might have inspired them. Their faith in so many of our societal structures have been sorely tested and they find themselves questioning what it is all supposed to be about while their elders often poke fun at their ideas. 

If we jump to the oldest among us we also see a loss of precious time that they will never get back. They were among the biggest losers of people that they loved. Life changed so dramatically for them and they mostly faced the pain and sorrow alone. The world moved on from them too early and they grew older faster because of the loneliness. 

The bulk of the responsibility fell on the young men and women of working age. Many of them began to work from home. They married with small intimate weddings. They had their first children without the usual fanfare. They found themselves operating in a world for which they had never planned. They had to balance so many responsibilities that they barely had time for sleep. They had to wait for everything to be normal again and somehow the same normality they had once known never really returned. In some parts of the world they even had to deal with wars, famines, earthquakes, and other disasters on top of the upheaval from the virus. They did their best to remain steadfast in their resolve to keep things moving forward but nothing around them seemed to be the same. There was a worldwide seismic shift, a once in a generation challenge that is still reverberating across the globe. 

I cleaned up my messy photo library but left that task feeling quite pensive and determined to do my part to understand and help those who have lost the most through no fault of their own or anybody else for that matter. We were engaged in a world war on a virus. As with any war damage was done. Now it is time to make peace with one another and do whatever it takes to rebuild with a happy future in mind. That will take dedication on our part. We each have jobs to do. Perhaps the place to begin is outside of ourselves. We owe it to those we love to repair the world and make it even better than it was when the virus invaded it. It’s time to work together because we all need each other. Let the future photos demonstrate that what we are going to do becomes an effort that brings us back together.