Congratulations! If you are reading this, you survived 2020 – a year which began with much of NSW choked by bushfires and ends with the world still grappling with a pandemic that has claimed almost two million lives.
I shared a beer with school mates back in February, right before our innocence shattered. One of them, Dave, mentioned that his partner was in Wuhan visiting family. She’d just been told the Australian Government would fly her to Christmas Island before allowing her back on home soil.
We laughed it off. Plagues like the Black Death and Spanish Flu were the stuff of history books. Surely it couldn’t happen to us?
But the early death counts from China and Iran were frightening, quickly followed by harrowing scenes of elderly patients trapped in respirators in Northern Italy. A friend in New York told of seeing morgue trucks on the way to the supermarket; and jogging on the Upper East Side while the dying were treated in makeshift tents in Central Park.
Here in Australia we were fortunate to be spared the worst of these horrors, even as a health crisis morphed into an economic and social calamity. In the Parramatta area, a mobile testing clinic was set up in the Our Lady of Lebanon Church. The streets emptied, unemployment peaked at nearly 10 per cent, and forgotten groups like international students and temporary visa holders relied on charity for food.
What meaning do I believe we take from this extraordinary year? Firstly, that every life is precious. It was easy to tune out as the death toll climbed from the hundreds, to the thousands, to the tens of thousands.
I try to remember that each was a human being struggling for air, perhaps farewelling family on Facetime or through glass. Many were abandoned or left untreated. Too many died alone.
Doing much better to care for older people in our society – in hospitals, homes and our community – must be a legacy from this pandemic.
COVID reminded us of the simplest of truths. That if you don’t breathe, you die. But more profoundly, that so long as breath exists, so does hope.
The second inspiration COVID offered me was about human connection. Before this year, it was something I took for granted. My expectations of friends were sky-high.
This year, to see mum once every few months, rather than once a week, reminded me of what I missed.
And I was touched by the people who popped out of the woodwork and were really truly there.
The final appreciation I’m sure we all have is of the people who kept us moving. Smiling supermarket staff who showed up when the risk was at its worst. Pharmacists who guided shoppers to face masks and thermometers. Construction teams who kept going on projects day and night.
Our doctors – including the GP who personally phoned to check up on me after offering a diagnosis over virtual chat. The superhuman effort put in by officials like Dr Kerry Chant.
And our leaders. Next year, they may have it tougher, but in 2020, we willed them to succeed and they largely did. December ends with tentative steps to a vaccine that could put this disease behind us.
Not for the first time, we end the year feeling lucky.
We’re Australian. We survived. Parramatta’s not a bad place to be.
Merry Christmas to all readers and here’s to a better 2021.
Alan is a journalist and communications specialist. He writes a weekly column for Parra News.