Will You Remember?
Crocheted toilet paper roll “2020”. All photographs courtesy of Kathleen Kuo.
By Kathleen Kuo
To my future self, do you remember
- Will you remember? -
the following
It was February 2020
When I first really started to take notice
Of that which would change our lives,
Irrevocably, forever.
At first we dismissed it,
It’s just a cold, it’s just like the flu,
There was SARS, H1N1, Zika,
Aren’t we just overreacting?
…Will we be okay?
Thinking back on this time
Shadows vignette, darken the corners of my memories
When the days began to take on this uneasy feeling
Of uncertainty, fear, suffocation.
Time seemed to slow, stretch on forever
As we waited for our new reality to be announced, pronounced
It’s serious, it’s here,
What’s going to happen?
Then it was March
And for the first time in my life
I felt like I was living through history,
That every single moment was precious,
Was being recorded somewhere on imaginary film,
Should be recorded somewhere not just in my mind,
Counted towards something more.
It’s here.
COVID-19 is here.
We always joke about what would happen during an apocalypse
If aliens came, or if zombies took over
But now I know, because we lived through it
And we are still living through it.
We would alienate others
(We already alienate others)
Pass judgment on who’s to blame and at fault
Purposefully shifting the blame away from our individual selves.
Blame the aliens
Every person for themselves
It’s not real, it won’t affect me
I didn’t realize it could happen to me.
The zombies wouldn’t be out there, creatures shambling after us,
Because we became the zombies
Are still zombies
Lifelessly going through our everyday routines
Trying to hold on to pre-pandemic life
Trying to make sense of the present
Even as time, movement, happiness, normalcy, being human
All came to a stop.
I remember driving in the spring
Early on during the lockdown
On my way to the grocery store
It was so bright outside, a beautiful day
But what I noticed was that the streets were eerily empty
It was like moving through a ghost town
(In Las Vegas, can you imagine?)
With no one around
Just the skeletons of buildings
Hiding the shadows of ourselves, of civilization
Grocery shopping during the early pandemic days in March 2020.
Passing through the aisles
Conspicuously absent of toilet paper, bottled water, and cleaning wipes,
I was drawn to the new signs
That had emerged out of nowhere, out of necessity.
Pieces of bright paper,
Quickly scrawled Sharpie notes,
Printed out displays, human creations hiding anxiety and fear
In the form of:
Limit one per household, please be courteous
Two cartons per person, please stand six feet apart
We apologize for any inconvenience
No limit on hummus.
We were so hopeful
This too, shall pass
If we washed our hands
Wore our masks
Stayed inside
Stayed apart
Were vaccinated
Were boosted
That this too, would pass
But the months did pass, and nearly two years later
That which should have passed
Has not.
Instead it’s stayed with us
Changing - changed- our lives,
Irrevocably, forever.
Dear future self,
What are the moments from this time
That you - that I - want to remember and keep?
Gilcrease Orchard in March 2021. Photo/Author.
Do you remember -
Will you remember?
The high points
Attending a dear friend’s wedding online
Then one in person, filled with love and reconnection
Game days and game nights
(thank you Zoom, thank you Discord)
Cooking more
Crocheting more
Petting my dog, pestering my boyfriend
Digital faces taking physical form - the excitement of first meetings
Reinforcing the importance of family and loved ones
Remembering what it was like to take time for myself,
That it’s okay to do nothing, to relax, to be happy,
To be grateful for what I have
And the low points
Missing my parents who had to reschedule and cancel flights back to the United States,
Wondering when I will ever see them in person again
Feeling stuck, feeling trapped, both stuck at home and unable to explore my new home
Deciding to leave my PHD program, wondering if it was seven years wasted
Returning to therapy, moving past disastrous therapists
Waking up and facing a world of ongoing protests, ongoing (Stop AAPI) hate
The other insidious virus, social injustice here to stay
Wondering if my 30s will become a black hole
Doomscrolling
…even as I write, I have to stop myself as the low points threaten to outnumber the high
At some point, what seems like lifetimes ago now,
the self care fatigue began to set in
You can only tell yourself the same things
Until the mantras grow old, devoid of any more meaning.
But I tell myself -
There were the moments I treasured
There were the moments that brought me pain
To my future self,
These are my moments - our moments -
Please don’t let them be lost in time
Like tears in rain
Since July 2020, I have read and listened to hundreds of stories about what it has been like to experience and live through the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been days when I’ve had to push aside the laptop and take an extended break after an especially emotional phone call or email exchange with a potential contributor. Countless stories are missing from our Humanities Heart to Heart page, from those I have been unable to make contact with, from those who have dropped contact, from those who have had to bow out due to personal emergencies or the stress of just getting by day to day, and more. I hold onto those shreds of conversations and imagine the rest of what has been left unsaid; now whenever I see others, I can’t help myself from wondering and imagining what their story is, and what they must be going through. With this in mind, the least any of us can do during this time is to extend grace, patience, and compassion to our fellow human beings.
I wanted to share a bit of my own story to close out the year 2021; I found that putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as it were) to express my own complicated feelings in a publicly accessible and appropriate manner was tremendously difficult. Part of this difficulty came in trying to figure out what exactly I would say and where I would start. Decision paralysis notwithstanding, I also had to confront my own personal roadblocks of worrying whether this would be good enough, would be enough. Many of us tell ourselves and stop ourselves at the cusp of creation with the excuse of “I’m not a writer, “I’m not a poet,” “I’m not a musician,” “I’m not…” But setting aside these labels, we can still write and create for ourselves, if not for others. We all have to start somewhere. This is what I tried to tell myself, at least.
If I had written this six months ago, or six months in the future, I know that this piece would take on a completely different form. In the end, what came out ended up being a prose poem of sorts. I tried my best to write straight from the heart without any pretension or hesitation. I wasn’t sure what meandering journey my thoughts would take, but I did know from the start that the “tears in rain” monologue from the film Blade Runner was something that I had to include. To me, this particular phrase has always struck an emotional chord of loss and longing. Innumerable moments and memories of my life are already lost; when I am gone, who will remember me, remember them? Despite all that we do and create, no one can ever truly understand and experience the life of another (short of having a Speaker for the Dead, another sci-fi reference and book that has greatly influenced me). My biggest takeaway from the pandemic is that our time here is precious. It is easy to take what we have for granted but as the past two years have demonstrated, so much of our way of life and what we have can be taken away from us in a heartbeat. The pandemic helped me to reconsider my life priorities and to pause, really pause, and treasure the things and people that matter the most to me.
I don’t know what 2022 will bring, but I hope that by this time next year, we’ll have come a step closer to the end of the pandemic and that we will all be in a better place. Many thanks to you, the reader, our community of readers, for staying with us through this time and being a part of this storytelling journey. What will you remember from this time?
At the 2021 Las Vegas Book Festival.
Kathleen Kuo is a Program Manager for Nevada Humanities. She curates the Humanities Heart to Heart program and is humbled to have had the chance to listen to and share the stories of hundreds of Nevadans during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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