This from a tweet I put up after taking a short walk through my small town of Nyack here in Rockland County New York:
Walked around downtown #Nyack when overwhelmed by an eerie, quiet, desolate, alone feeling that was all too familiar when it hit me...this is the same eerie "life has changed forever" feeling we all experienced in the immediacy and aftermath of 9/11 when the towers went down.
They say one picture is worth a thousand words, so here are three I snapped along the way that tell a story of the change, the quiet sense of desolation as we all collectively realize our world has forever changed, our normal turned upside down as the Corona Virus races around the world.
This sign already posted on the window of one of Main Streets well known places to dine. I am positive that most of the other dining and bar establishments will soon be posting their own similar messages to their loyal customers just before they tell their employees they are out of work until further notice. The lives of those who are surviving day to day, paycheck to paycheck forever changed with a few scant hours notice as many were informed just before what would be their last shift.
Several newly unemployed employees from the various places in town were all standing out in front of our local Starbucks commiserating in small groups of two or three, the refrains all the same..."I don't know how I am going to pay my rent in April" or "I have two kids, how am I supposed to feed them and keep a roof over our heads". Not having any answers I continued walking, leaving them and their pain behind, feeling helpless at my inability to lend them a helping hand or handout a tidbit of advice.
Starbucks here in Nyack is a hub of our community, local musicians outside playing their instruments or singing a song, a few dollars in their guitar case tokens of others appreciation. Chairs and tables inside at a premium as teenagers chat, business men/women making deals, and mothers tending to their children. Other than two forlorn employees, there were only two of us inside placing to go orders as that is all that was allowed. The chairs and tables were all gone, this sign informing us that our community gathering place was gone until further notice, all the familiar faces I am used to seeing and greeting missing in action.
The lack of life was everywhere, once impossible to find parking spaces along Main Street devoid of cars, our local parking enforcement employees wearing masks as they walked our empty sidewalks with nothing really to do other than trying to look busy, or perhaps trying not to appear scared at what we all are witnessing.
On the way back to my apartment I went down Main Street to Broadway and headed down to Memorial Park looking for signs of life...there were none, our children's playground empty, quiet, the sounds of laughter and Mothers talking nowhere to be found.
That is when the reality hit me, when I made my tweet posted above. That same disturbing eerie silence I've only known a few times in my 64 years tearing at my soul. The death of John F and Robert Kennedy, the loss of Martin Luther King Jr, the day the Space Shuttle blew up just after take off, and of course on 9/11 when the Twin Towers went down, and the aftermath that citizens of America followed each of these tragic events in our nation's history...they all came with this similar eerie silence, as if a part of us and our world had died, changing each of us and our lives in a forever kind of a way.
Several newly unemployed employees from the various places in town were all standing out in front of our local Starbucks commiserating in small groups of two or three, the refrains all the same..."I don't know how I am going to pay my rent in April" or "I have two kids, how am I supposed to feed them and keep a roof over our heads". Not having any answers I continued walking, leaving them and their pain behind, feeling helpless at my inability to lend them a helping hand or handout a tidbit of advice.
Starbucks here in Nyack is a hub of our community, local musicians outside playing their instruments or singing a song, a few dollars in their guitar case tokens of others appreciation. Chairs and tables inside at a premium as teenagers chat, business men/women making deals, and mothers tending to their children. Other than two forlorn employees, there were only two of us inside placing to go orders as that is all that was allowed. The chairs and tables were all gone, this sign informing us that our community gathering place was gone until further notice, all the familiar faces I am used to seeing and greeting missing in action.The lack of life was everywhere, once impossible to find parking spaces along Main Street devoid of cars, our local parking enforcement employees wearing masks as they walked our empty sidewalks with nothing really to do other than trying to look busy, or perhaps trying not to appear scared at what we all are witnessing.
On the way back to my apartment I went down Main Street to Broadway and headed down to Memorial Park looking for signs of life...there were none, our children's playground empty, quiet, the sounds of laughter and Mothers talking nowhere to be found.That is when the reality hit me, when I made my tweet posted above. That same disturbing eerie silence I've only known a few times in my 64 years tearing at my soul. The death of John F and Robert Kennedy, the loss of Martin Luther King Jr, the day the Space Shuttle blew up just after take off, and of course on 9/11 when the Twin Towers went down, and the aftermath that citizens of America followed each of these tragic events in our nation's history...they all came with this similar eerie silence, as if a part of us and our world had died, changing each of us and our lives in a forever kind of a way.
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