No Cavities. Just Tears.

Unable to Speak, You Listen.

I got my teeth cleaned yesterday. I had no cavities, and the hygienist told me she could tell I floss regularly.  

This was after she told me that she’d just lost her father to COVID.

When you get your teeth cleaned, it’s awkward/impossible to carry on a conversation, since you basically can never talk. You mouth is occupied with either an implement or suction device, so the best you can manage by way of response are vocalizations, as opposed to words. Un huh for yes. Ooooooh? for really. But as far as actual talking goes, it’s a one way street.

Usually, one-way is adequate, but not yesterday. Debbie, my hygienist, told me how her 87-year-old dad had never been sick, and was a day away from getting his booster after being fully vaccinated. Then, he went to the hospital with a case of what he thought was pneumonia, which turned out to be COVID.

I listened to Debbie’s story, one uniquely painful, personal COVID story in a sea of millions, where people we know, people we love, go into hospitals and wind up on ventilators and then don’t make it out. She talked about sitting in father’s room with her mother, both in full PPE for 18 hours straight in office chairs to be near him, because if they left, they would not be allowed to go back in. She told me how he said goodbye to his family on FaceTime.

I know versions of this story are happening all over the world, but for me to sit in the reclining chair, draped in a bib and unable to speak, to simply take in her quiet voice, hit hard, like I was absorbing her loss, rather than volleying it back, which is how conversation, even sympathetic conversation, works. She told me about holding his hand at the very end, this gentle, friendly man who loved people, a guy who owned a local shoe store, and since he’d never done outdoor work, she noticed how soft his hands were. Something about the open wonder in her voice was my undoing. Up to then, my mouth had been handling things with the un huhs and oooohs, but then, my eyes had to take over, which is when I discovered that in a pinch, those paper bibs work on tears.