This nonfiction piece was originally written in September 2021 as an example for my students.
When COVID-19 hit the United States, my grandma lost all contact with her husband.
Not that he minded much—my grandpa has been struggling with Alzheimer’s since 2007, when he started forgetting bank account passwords and obsessively collecting toe-nail clippers at the young age of sixty-five. Eventually, his condition progressed to the point that my grandma could no longer take care of him, and he moved into a veteran’s home fifteen minutes down the freeway from his home. There, my grandma continued to dutifully visit him.
Until the beginning of the pandemic, when the veteran’s home was closed to outsiders due to the high-risk status of every single one of its geriatric residents.
My grandma was devastated. Despite the fact that Papa no longer remembered her face, despite the fact that he’d lost the ability to speak or even make regular eye contact, despite the fact that he has a hard time holding still long enough to hold her hand anymore…what little connection she had with her husband had been taken from her.
Still, she remained devoted to him. As soon as the veteran’s home announced that family members could visit if they stayed on the other side of a plexiglass wall in an outside courtyard, my grandma was plastered to that plexiglass wall. I went with her during their 2020 wedding anniversary—a young nurse held Papa’s hand as my grandma watched. We played old World War II songs that my grandpa had listened to as a child from and danced to sock-hop music until some spark of recognition made Papa chuckle while staring at the pavement.
When it was time to leave, my grandma got close to the plexiglass.
“I love you, Bob,” she whispered as the nurse held his hand.
“I love you, Bob,” she repeated. “I love you.”
“Today is our anniversary. We’re married, Bob. I’m your wife.”
When the veteran’s home opened up again to inside visits without plexiglass, I went with my grandma again to visit Papa. She kissed him through her mask, she held his hand, I commented on how fashionable he looked in his sweatpants and Sunday dress shirt. He stared at the floor, but there was an occasional smile or hand-tremor of excitement as we told him what was happening with other members of our family. The orderlies gave us an extra hour with him—perhaps they too forgot that we existed, at least for a moment—and my grandma didn’t let go of him until the very end, when she once again whispered that she loved him.
Two days ago, my grandpa tested positive for COVID-19.
He isn’t eating anymore, and his body is growing frail. We won’t be surprised if in a few weeks he’s gone the way of the earth, leaving yet another vacancy in the veteran’s home. But no matter what happens—if he dies from this virus, if he recovers from this virus, if Alzheimer’s kills him, if they discover a cure for it next week—I know that my grandma will be by his side. She will remember him, she will love him, she will care for him. Because she understands the strength that love has, even when a person can’t comprehend that love. She understands that devotion cares not for illness, nor for praise. It is a quiet power that adheres us to one another, that drives us to remember those who are lost.
Perhaps love grows more potent when unrecognized.
My grandpa Van Orman ended up surviving his bout with COVID-19, but passed away in August 2023.