Today I would like to eulogize our lives before the pandemic. I think we’ve all been grieving, even if we don’t realize it. We’re grieving the death of normalcy, of togetherness.

I remember the last time we were in school before the quarantine was imposed. It was a normal Friday in March. We were starting to get excited about spring and school ending soon. Little did we know we would have a lot more time away from school than anticipated. We asked teachers what they thought about the coronavirus to waste class time. Nothing seemed as serious or as heavy back then.

Our lives before were filled with germs. Filled with crowded hallways with people calling to each other over students’ heads. We packed comic amounts of people into elevators and public rooms. We were blissfully unaware of how much all of that would be feared now.

Now, our lives feel more anxious, distrusting. We are afraid to get physically close to one another. I miss hugging my friends. I miss my family, whom I haven’t seen in a long time, as we are wary of traveling right now.

There are so many things I miss about pre-pandemic life. I miss seeing my friends as much as I used to. I miss having somewhere to go every day, instead of just being at home. I even miss waking up horribly early for school five days a week. I hated it at the time, but now I hold the memory of the early mornings in my mind with fondness.

Its funny, but in grieving pre-pandemic life, I think we have all realized that the ordinary, the mundane, and hated routines we went through every single day are the ones we now long for the most.