It was 8:00am, I had just finished my morning routine. The bright light of my computer shines into my eyes as I log onto the google meet for my first class of the day. As I sit in the meeting I wonder to myself, 

            “What day is it today? I know it's not a weekend but all the days have been blending into my life and everyday just feels the same now”.

             I start to think about what had happened at the very beginning of the pandemic. It was February of 2020 and I was in the 8th grade. We had just started to learn about this new “sickness” going around and how we have to start wearing masks. We all thought it would be like all the other viruses before like Ebola and we all just shrugged it off. 

            “this won’t be that bad” I thought to myself, “maybe some kids will be out for a few days but this will all go away soon.”

             But a few weeks go by, all these articles about the severity of this virus as I scroll my phone. When the news 

It's been like 8 months since the event occurred, around the same time the pandemic had started. Everything has been a lot better but sometimes my mind drifts, “what if none of this had started? What if there was no virus? would my great grandmother still be alive?”. Tears start to form as I remember all the memories I had with her, eating with her, drinking tea with her, and refusing the money she tried to give me over and over to be polite. Many people have gone through this experience, according to The Covid Tracking Project an estimated 500,000 people have died in just the first year of Covid-19 alone in just the US. So I wasn’t the only one that had experienced something this bad, ”there are many other people like me, I wonder how they are dealing with it?”

“Your great grandma just passed away from Covid” my mom told me.

I saw my vision go dark as I process what I had just been told the new

When the news was first broken to me, it all felt like a blur, I don’t fully remember how I reacted at the time, it was like shock had taken over. But I remember distinctly after, when I went to my room I could hear my mom silently sobbing in the room directly next to mine. Going up to the door and sitting against it.

“Are you okay, is everything good there?” I ask my mom.

“Yea, I’m doing fine now” my mom responds softly.

I knew this was a lie but I didn’t know what to do, hearing the soft crying through the door crushed me. Covid has made me realize that life is tough and that there will be many things that hurt. 

It was rough thinking back to all the good memories that I had with her. Looking at my mom repeatedly as she tried to hand me a red envelope every chinese new year, saying
“No it’s okay, you don’t have to give me the money”, when I did want the money but didn’t want to look bad in front of my parents. 

Going to her home and drinking the hot tea that she brewed for me. All of these memories felt so warm and so near my heart. But now, they all just feel empty, like the shell of once great memories.

I could see a void growing around me, bigger and bigger the more I thought back about my memories. I could see a rift growing between my family as we all became more isolated from each other following the death of my great grandmother. My mom was too upset to see any of my family or even us. I was scared to see my mother in case I got too emotional and made things worse or that I would say the wrong things. 

But it was now the day of her funeral. My mom was visibly emotional but didn’t want to show it to me and the rest of our family in hopes that she would seem like she’s doing well now. But it was clear, the pauses and hesitation in her speech, the red eyes all showed me that she was still very upset. 

The smell of the incense still has not left my nose, all those folded golden papers and the prop money and clothes that we burned, hoping she would receive them in the afterlife.