Count your blessings

This is a "visitation tent," outisde the entrance of an assisted-living, memory-care facility in West Seattle.  I was there yesterday with a friend from The Ukes to visit a special 94-year old lady.

She is a big ukulele fan and never missed our Monday afternoon sing-along at the Senior Center. After lunch with her friends in the dining room, we always played her favorite song, "Over the Rainbow."

Sadly, the Senior Center, once such a busy and vibrant part of the community, has been closed now for months.

The tent has a full plastic divider down the middle, and the residents enter on the left side. The chairs you see are for the visitors. There is also a plastic screen (that vertical black line) that protects residents as they move from the entrance to the tent. Masks are worn, and of course there's no physical contact.

This might seem restrictive, but it's actually a big improvement.  Families and friends can visit face-to-face. Well, at least while the weather is still nice.

Up until a few weeks ago, residents were confined to their rooms 24/7 and meals left at the door. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that. Kudos to the facility for keeping them safe, but what a price to pay for folks in frail mental and physical health. Not to mention, their families.

We are all so tired of this, but when you miss the things you can't do, think about those with no freedom at all. And all the others who have lost their lives. And the families crushed.

The cruelty of this pandemic just takes your breath away. And so much of the suffering is out-of-sight, in hospitals and nursing homes. Perhaps that's part of the problem, as people go about their daily lives acting as if nothing was wrong. On my way to the nursing home, I drove along Alki Beach and it looked like any summer afternoon on Coney Island.

Anyway, we brought our ukuleles along and played a few songs in the tent, including her favorite. After all this ordeal, she was still smiling, and didn't seem to notice we were pretty rusty. I enjoyed it too, the first time I've played with another person in 6 months. Without friends, the ukulele is a sad instrument.