TweetThis whole covid thing sucks. My grandmother was in a care center when this whole thing started and doing very well. She would talk your ear off about anything and everything lol. She was on the side where they could come and go as they pleased. She'd go shopping and out to get coffee with her friends. She was a bundle of energy.

Then they locked that place down tight, no visitation or anything. When we were finally able to see her through glass after months, she was unrecognizable. I would have had no clue she was my grandmother if I had to go find her. She didn't know who we were. She didn't say much of anything. She looked like skeleton. They said she wouldn't eat. I wanted to (and almost did) break that glass down and rip the heads off everyone working there. But... I started noticing a lot of the nurses and care givers were crying, or looked like they had been crying. I talked to my grandmother's care giver (who started crying) and she said it's been so hard watching all their loved ones deteriorate. She called all of the seniors "their loved ones". She said they've tried so hard to keep spirits up, but when they were forced to lock down, the seniors could no longer see their families and it took it's toll on a lot of them. I could feel her sadness and it matched mine. I can't imagine going to work every day watching people you've come to love drift away because the government decided to lock everything down.

My grandmother passed away weeks later. Her nurse let me go in and hold her hand in her bed while she went. She couldn't move or speak, but I gave her a kiss and she squeezed my hand, so I know she knew I was there. I wanted to take a picture of her and send it with a picture from a few months prior to our country's various dictators and say here's what your f**king lockdowns did. But I guess I'm trying to understand the trade off. Which one would have taken more lives at a facility like that.... Covid, or isolation. I'm just ready to get passed all this covid crap.