We’ll See You Back Out There… Someday

“Dark and silent late last night I think I might have heard the highway calling… and I’m gone to Carolina in my mind.”

This week would have been the one where we launched our first wave of travel across the US, to New England and across much of Western Europe. Best laid plans. For now, we will just need to continue to think about all the places we’ll go.

As we shelter at home, mourning the stories we hear of so many special people who have succumbed to this horrible, breath-stealing virus and watch as governments and economies tentatively try to reopen, we brace for and hope against a second wave of pandemic. We hope and pray that what seems inevitable: a resurgence without a vaccine or properly vetted and known therapeutics, does not come to pass.

It is spring which makes this all the more surreal. This should be a time of blossoms and blooms, new life and hope, graduations, weddings and celebrations. For us, it was supposed to be the launch of our new, much planned and anticipated, life of seeing, exploring, photographing, capturing, journaling and recording. And while that failure to launch is disappointing and, well I’ll admit it: heartbreaking, from time to time, we know it could be worse. Way worse.

Our plans are paused. We don’t know for how long but that’s it. A pause. And while our relatively small sacrifice means a lot to us, we know that there are so many others who are suffering, are caring for those who are suffering or who have lost those who suffered. We know that there are those who don’t have the luxury to stay home. Those who are first responders and the military, supply chain providers and truckers, government officials, hourly wage earners driving busses or trains or delivering or preparing delivered food, pharmaceutical companies and scientists racing for a care and manufacturers of PPE, farmers and food processors and most of all our former colleagues in healthcare who don’t have the luxury to stay home and shelter safely in place.

So, thank you to those who are keeping us running. Thank you who are keeping us safe. Thank you to those who are keeping us stocked and supplied. Thank you to those scientists and doctors racing for treatments and vaccines. Thank you to those who are trying to save each “case” and prevent those sad 15- second snippets on the news about lives lost too soon in our ERs and hospitals around the world. Because of all of you, this too shall pass and we will see you all back out there… someday in the not too distant future.