Our annual Ball in February.
My mother passed away on March 2 in New York, and we had the wake on March 8 and funeral/burial on March 9. After the burial, as is traditional in our family, we had a lunch for about 50 family and friends at one of her favorite restaurants.
My mother, who was 89, had been declining for six months. Although coronavirus had already hit New York, her death wasn’t related. It wasn’t considered a great concern at the time, and restrictions didn’t start being put in place until the weekend after her funeral.
I feel fortunate we were able to have the gathering when we did. Two weeks later and it wouldn’t have been possible. And although coronavirus was already circulating, I haven’t heard that any participants have come down with it.
I just barely made it back to Panama on March 18, three days before all international flights were cancelled. I have no idea when I’ll be able to see the rest of my family again.
My last board game meet-up. It was March 14.
I don’t keep a diary/journal and smoke way too much to have a short-term memory. We used to go out to breweries and restaurants most Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. I miss it, but cannot even imagine going back to our old routine. I’m sitting here getting teary eyed just thinking about it.
February 2nd was the last for us we went to a Superbowl party. We ended up canceling my dad’s 70th birthday party on March 14th and the annual St. Patties day party we go to was canceled as well though I think most of that was they just had their second kid in January.
ETA: I did go out to dinner with a client on March 13th but I’m not sure there were 10 people in the building.
I worked as an election judge on March 17. If that doesn’t count, I went to an Aqua Zumba class on March 13. If that doesn’t count, then it was a baby shower for my niece February 29.
The weekend of February 29th - March 1st. A Flyball tournament in Lindsay, California. At the time knew of at least one case of community transmission of the novel coronavirus in the state, following the arrival at a military base in the region of evacuees from China. I brought a few cheap disposable facemasks from work and wore one most of the time, but I was the only attendee to do so.
In my motel room on the morning of departure I had the local news channel on, and I remember seeing footage of a stretcher brought out of a nursing home in WA - the first US death.
We had a memorial for my mother (at her request) at her favorite restaurant in NYC in 2017. Just made me remember. It was several months after shiva, and really, I actually had a very good time. There was lots of food, and an open bar, all paid for from my mother’s estate; exactly what she would have wanted. People got up and shared stories, and lots of people had traveled a ways to be there. Again, at my mother’s request, my brother and I spent some time putting together lists of things to do in the city for free or cheap, and booked a floor on an hotel, so we got a group discount, first come, first served-- but many people knew others in the city, and had someone to stay with, so actually, we just assigned the last room a few weeks before the memorial.
My mother loved Manhattan; she had good years other places, but she wanted everyone to have a great time.
While it’s very sad to lose someone after a long life, it’s not necessarily tragic, when they die in a bed, with people around them (in my mother’s case-- not TOO MANY-- she hated crowds :rolleyes:), and a morphine drip.[/hijack]
Doctors office. Can’t remember the date. It was after my hospital stay.
I know the clinic is not really a social event, but I would not normally do anything else.
If that doesn’t work, we hosted a Super bowl party.
Physical Therapy, March 2
I went to a dance club on Monday, March 9th. Probably about 60 people in a pretty small space. I remember thinking at the time that this 'ronavirus thing was getting serious and maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. But it still seemed like an abstract threat at that point. In the next few days everything changed.
I had to go to the doctors office a few weeks ago, it was a bit nerve racking. The doctor calmed my fears by mentioning that they only had one person with Covid come in the previous day…
My son and I went to the San Jose Sharks hockey game on March 7. The authorities had already warned against large gatherings. Perhaps as a result, the crowds was smaller than normal. A lot of people said the game should have been canceled, so within days the county enacted a ban on gatherings like that.
If we’re counting medical appointments, I had my yearly mammogram yesterday. I stated ahead of time that if it didn’t look like they were taking proper precautions at their office, that I’d back out and reschedule. However, they had a team in the lobby making sure that there were only a couple of people at a time in the waiting room, and there were only four widely separated chairs in a waiting room that used to hold fifteen or so. No magazines or other public-handled items were in evidence. They wiped down insurance cards, pens etc. with alcohol, and, I am sure, the mammography machine. I felt reassured and went ahead with my appointment.
It was weird seeing and talking to people other than a grocery cashier.
Before the lockdown, the last thing we did was to go to a superb Thai restaurant, around March 10 or so. Man, I miss restaurants.
I was in a small meeting on March 16th.
Las time I attended a large gathering of any kind was in January when I went to a local pub to watch the college football championship. I went out to some smaller meet-ups and that sort of thing until late February or early March.
Beginning of March was highly unusual for me. Heart surgery on March 4, then we flew to San Diego for a business conference (about 80 attendees) on March 7, returning home on the 10th.
I was still out for recovery from surgery when the state went to lockdown.
My mother had a hard time her last few months, but she passed away in her sleep in her own bed in the house she had been born in, which is better than most people get. (We had a full time aide, who found her asleep and breathing at 2 AM, but cold when she checked again at 4:30 AM.) I had seen her last on January 2.
A church gathering in March or February. I can’t even recall when.
I went to the movies to see Arrival on March 11. Very strange walking home afterward with so few people on the street.
I was at a martial arts seminar the weekend of March 7/8. Stayed in an AirBnB place with most of the senior instructors and a few others, about 8 people total, and then about 40 or so at the seminar itself. We’re not a hugging and kissing type group, but we did share a kitchen, meals, and bathrooms.
And the Thursday after I got home, I had a scare that I might have been exposed to the virus before that event, so I had to warn them all. Turned out to be a false alarm, but those two days where I thought I might have exposed all my friends really sucked.
By that point, I was working at home, so I wasn’t worried about spreading anything any further, but that scare was a wake up about how quickly you could go from “Everything’s fine!” to “I might have killed my friends”.
One of those friends is in recovery from a bad cancer, so killing him was actually a real possibility.