We drove up to the elementary school with a sign in our window that had our last name, the boys' first names, and the names of their teachers. Then a PTSA volunteer found the garbage bags filled with my boys' things and passed it through the window. There weren't any teachers there to wave and say goodbye, no balloons, and no fanfare. I started to cry as they passed us our stuff as the reality of our abrupt halt to everything normal sank in even deeper. What has COVID done to us that we can't even walk into the school to say goodbye to the teachers? Thankfully my boys were underwhelmed by the whole thing so I quickly wiped my eyes and drove away.
Ethan was thrilled to skip the whole 8th grade promotion ceremony. I forced him to take a few pictures of his last time in middle school and then it was over. Another abrupt ending of a big milestone. I wanted to cry. He couldn't have cared less. What is wrong with my children??
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| Ethan happily returning his math book |
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| Walking down eerily empty halls |
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| After we got someone to look up his locker combination because he couldn't remember it, we cleaned out his locker and left. |
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| At the exit was a pile of 8th grade diplomas. We picked one up and that was the end of his promotion ceremony. |
Marcus turned in his text books at an empty high school parking lot. He didn't even get to go inside the school. It took about thirty seconds to hand over his stuff and we were done. Sophomore year over. He was a little disappointed in the lack of fanfare. No one was there cheering or holding up signs. It was quiet and empty. I hate COVID.
We celebrated the end of the school year with a slip-and-slide party and root beer floats in the backyard. Most of the kids who came were from our neighborhood with the exception of three boys. The kids had a blast and the adults enjoyed the sunshine while talking about the crazy world we live in. But mostly we celebrated the end of the longest fifteen weeks of remote learning. It was hard. It was ugly. I never want to do it again. I hate COVID.
I never took a picture of the boys on the last day. It made me too sad. We should've been celebrating them as they got off the bus but there was no bus. I think my kids are fine with things because they are having fun with their friends and it just feels like summer but I know when we get through this pandemic and look back on it, my heart will feel heavy with sorrow for all the things we didn't get to do. As I dug through the piles of school work and notebooks it was disturbing to see their journal entries stop so abruptly way back in March. Landon's teacher sent him home an envelope with a birthday card and birthday pencil in it that she meant to give him when he was student of the week. That never happened. It probably sounds weird but seeing so many unfinished things reminded me of reading Lindsey's journal and going through all her mission stuff. It felt like someone had died because normal life routine doesn't usually just stop and our world certainly did stop in March. I am truly sad for the many things my kids missed out on. Little things like sitting at lunch with their friends, learning from their teachers, playing lacrosse, attending church activities, talking to friends on the bus, waiting for me to pick them up, running to the bus stop in the morning, getting up for early morning seminary, speeding to church so we're not late, watching movies in a movie theater, eating in a restaurant, swimming in a pool, and waking up to an alarm clock because there is somewhere to go and something to do are just a few of the normal things that are now a distant memory. It makes me so sad. So, so sad.
It's a tough time, that's for sure. For everybody.
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