Covid-19 has us questioning whether we’ll live, and what we may live to find

I had a Skype conversation with my cousin Sean in London on Saturday.

His goatee beard has got a little greyer since the last time we spoke but his wacky sense of humour is still the same.

It was a conversation I feared I would never get to have with him.

For the past 38 days, he has been in the intensive care unit in a London hospital, hovering between life and death, much of the time unaware of the grim battle being fought by his body and the medical staff against the evil unleashed by the coronavirus.

That little chat – which didn’t last long because he tires easily and has tubes still stuck in his chest and nose – was the light at the end of a tunnel of grief and uncertainty.

There are probably thousands of other families around the world who have been through something similar – but, sadly, many more who had to let their loved ones go, often without being able to say goodbye.

When Covid-19 insinuates its horrible tentacles into your world like this, it’s difficult not to take a step back and think about mortality – if not your own, then that of the people nearest and dearest to you.

This disease, it has been shown, is really dangerous for those of advanced years, as well as those with other serious medical issues.

It is not something young people should worry about. In any event, when you’re young, you don’t look to that point in the future when you actually don’t have one.

When I was 19, playing soldiers, I thought I would live forever, not come home in a body bag, even when some of my buddies did.

Later, working as a journalist in life-threatening situations, I could never envisage the eulogies at my own funeral, even as I sat through them for others.

When the kids came along, all that changed and I realised no amount of gung-ho macho was going to make up for not being there to see them grow up.

But even then, I still did not consider “the end ”.

Now, though, I know people who are vulnerable to the worst effects of this virus. Sometimes, I look around and wonder which one of them might be “called”.

In the same vein, even though life has never been the land of milk and honey for us as a family in financial terms, we’ve been comfortable.

But the economic destruction wrought by the lockdowns means the financial future is even less secure.

We are going to have to cut our coat to suit the new, plainer, less abundant cloth. So, there probably won’t be many restaurant outings in the future (not that there’ll be that many restaurants left, either) and overseas trips to see the kids will become few and far between.

A simpler life, though, has its appeal.

Human beings can surely live without 43 different brands of toothpaste and without seat warmers in their million-rand cars.

Will there come a time when the pool is filled in to make way for a veggie patch?

Maybe it’s time we stopped letting our possessions weigh us down and weigh down the fragile planet we call home.

You can’t take any of it with you when you go, anyway, and the “winner” isn’t the one with the most toys.

So, even in Level 4 of our suburban house arrest, I will take the time to admire the slow, graceful fall of a yellowed autumn leaf and feel the sharp, tingling approach of winter on my face.

And, I will appreciate the conversations…

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