Love in the Time of Corona

5 min readMar 20, 2020

Day 1: Why I will write.

Yesterday was Day 1.

It wasn’t truly Day 1, of course; Day 1 was January 20, 2020, when the novel coronavirus first made official landfall on US soil. But yesterday was the first day I wrote about it, which means things are serious because I’m only compelled to write like this when things are serious. Life can be funny like that — it gives you gifts you might prefer never to use.

I would most definitely prefer not to be writing about this. I’d prefer to be writing about baseball, or Westworld, or the loveliness of spring and summer in Santa Monica. Heck, I’d rather even write about the election, and I remember a time not too long ago when I thought that four more years of this administration was the worst thing facing our country (and that climate change or nuclear war with Iran was the most immediate threat facing our world).

I am very hopeful that we will find a treatment for this disease quickly, and that we can limit its spread. There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about this, and to take pride in the collaborative and resilient spirit that many people around the world have shown in fighting COVID-19.

But while those endeavors progress, people are dying, human beings are suffering, and the world is changing in front of our eyes. This is the bleakest moment of my lifetime, and that list includes 9/11, the Great Recession and the election of the very stable genius who thought it was more important to keep the numbers of positive coronavirus tests low than to spearhead a quick and effective response to this pandemic.

What we are facing represents the greatest threat to the American population, and the world’s population, in decades. Again, I am hopeful that we stem the tide quickly — and we very well may — but barring a sudden medical breakthrough or seasonal weakening of the virus, we are looking at a scenario in which people across the world hole up in isolation while their friends and family members enter the hospital, many of them never to return.

I do not know if I will survive this. I’m 33, and the odds of survival are certainly higher for me than they are for other population groups, but nothing is guaranteed (and as more and more reports come out, it’s clear that death isn’t the only long-term result this virus can have). I do not know if my sister, parents, stepfather, grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles will survive this. I do not know what my family, let alone the world, will look like a year from now.

There is perhaps no greater fear than the fear of the unknown, and that is what this coronavirus has thrown at us: a giant maelstrom of death-around-the-corner, lurking in the shadows of every cough, sneeze, doorknob, grocery line and Amazon package.

This is why I’ll write — because there is so little else one can do at this moment. Some days, many days, I plan to write happy things, funny things, life-affirming things that aim to provide a bit of solace and meaning during these difficult times. But other days, I will write what I am feeling, what I am experiencing, and those days will be far less cheerful but no less real.

Most days, like yesterday, will be a mix of both: They’ll involve beautiful moments, like FaceTime calls with my family, enjoying the LA sunset and telling the people I care about most in this world that I love them. They’ll also involve prolonged bouts of fear and anxiety, when every touch of pain or unusual sensation in any part of my body immediately convinces me that I’ve been infected, and I’m about to be in for the fight of my life. (My family will tell you that I can be a bit of a hypochondriac, and most of the time, they’re right. Most of the time, otherwise healthy 33-year-old men don’t end up in the ICU because of coronavirus. Most of the time.)

I will write because I need to write, and perhaps because others need to read. There’s a Vonnegut quote, one of my favorites:

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.”

In this case, most of you probably do feel some of the things I’m feeling, and you probably do care about many of the things I care about. At a time when we are mostly alone in a physical sense, we are less alone than ever in our shared experience of this global episode of trauma.

Right now, I happen to be reading Love in the Time of Cholera for the first time, and that’s where I got the inspiration for this blog series’ title. Much like this story we’re living, I don’t know how the book ends (please don’t spoil it!), but I hope the answer is as happily as can reasonably be expected.

Somewhere there’s a lesson, many lessons, in all this. Some day, I pray we will reflect on those lessons, and in the best case we will thank our lucky stars that things didn’t turn out worse than they did. First, we must get through this — no matter what comes.

On my FaceTime call with my family yesterday, I quoted a line from Game of Thrones: “What do we say to Death?”

My sister answered, “Not today.”

And that’s what I will tell myself and those I love, each day that I write:

Not today.

Please RECOMMEND (clap) and SHARE this story, and always Keep It Movin.

Read other posts from the “Love in the Time of Corona” series by Sam Rosenthal:

Read more of Sam Rosenthal’s work at samrose101.com, check out his #businesscardstories collection, follow him at @SamRoseWrites and stay tuned for his debut novel, Walking Backwards.

Love in the Time of Corona

Day 1: Why I will write.

Read other posts from the “Love in the Time of Corona” series by Sam Rosenthal:

Written by Sam Rosenthal

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