May: Before and during the pandemic

The temperature last Tuesday, May 4, 2021, was very hot despite occasional rains and showers. That summer heat brought back memories of the month of May before COVID.

Although pre-COVID May brought in the sun and heat, many did not seem to care or even notice May’s blazing summer heat and sun, especially those from the cities who returned to their hometowns.

Being part of the summer vacation months, memories of pre-COVID May drift back to fiestas, reunions of families and friends, to fun at beaches, to travel, to welcome break from school and work.

Pre-COVID May also generously offered varieties of delicious fresh fruits and scented, colorful flowers. Moreover, the month allowed for a rediscovery of the beauty, the bounty, the tender care of nature.

And of relationships within homes, within clans, within communities, across locations - social ties that extended beyond May, the summer break, and, lasting throughout lifetimes even.

No substitute for the joy, the laughter, the fun and other feel good moments of pre-COVID May treasured by hearts for months or years after.

Even with the pandemic here, the sun still shines brightly. The heat is still experienced now. The fruits and flowers are still here. Nature also continues to share respite for souls with her beauty, bounty and care.

However, COVID has chained many to their homes. Travel is restricted, social relationships limited as well.

Hardly any reunions and no fiestas! One’s social world has eerily become virtual!

Instead of warm hugs and happy kisses, one receives icons or virtual signs of affection and other emotions.

Worship has become more private as congregation remains prohibited to prevent the virus or the variants from spreading.

Humans are social beings, however.

Apart from their significant and generalized others, humans feel the void, realize some precious part of themselves longing to be completed, to be fulfilled.

With the virus and variants infecting thousands all throughout, this year’s May is a challenging time for so many, here and abroad.

Our thoughts are especially with India so devastated by this pandemic. Officials and researchers are warning that the Philippines may be another India if Filipinos fail to strictly follow health protocols.

Our prayers go to NCR and other areas of Luzon with very high incidence of COVID cases. Individual compliance of health protocols as well as a genuine intelligent and efficient leadership truly concerned for the welfare of the people can help contain the virus and protect more.

There is some faint ray of hope this May, with more vaccinations taking place. However, can national and local government truly and responsibly provide sufficient vaccination as well as necessary economic and welfare support for our people, from this May, and beyond?

The long queue of the needy for government ayuda and for private food and other donations is a pathetic image that will long stay in our individual and collective memory.

Saddled with multiple crises- health, economic, political, and more, May during Covid presents a grim, painful face of reality of the increasing poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless.

The community pantry is now in the thousands from just one early April.

Like cool, brief breeze of certain summer days, community pantries are easing the pangs of hunger for one, for families, for communities for a day, for a week or more.

How long will the community pantries last? How long can individual and collective care and kindness last? Can the miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish be sustained?

Oh, we pray till May 2022, 2023, beyond please.

If only goodness and kindness can last forever. That will be the best change, the much-awaited genuine cure for the world, for all.