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 Aching for My Grandchildren in Isolation

With my compromised immunity,
blowing kisses through the window is an act of love and hope.

For full article, go to Aching for My Grandchildren in Isolation - The New York Times

The author’s granddaughter JoJo on a front porch visit.

Wendy S. Harpham

By Wendy S. Harpham, M.D.

Published April 29, 2020
Updated April 30, 2020

Decades ago, self-isolating helped save my life. For one week each month, my husband cared for our children, who were 1, 3, and 5 at the time, while I navigated bottomed-out blood counts alone in my bedroom. Hairless and hungry for my children’s hugs, I threw them kisses from afar and watched their little fingers snatch the air to bring my love to their lips.

My hope of surviving cancer helped me keep my distance. Except once. I vividly remember listening to the giggles and splashes of our daughters in the bathtub and our baby’s babbling in the next room. A sudden bonk followed by wailing unhinged me. I escaped my bedroom and headed toward the distress. My husband, who had never raised his voice at me, roared: “Get away!”

Shaken, I retreated to my hideaway. Hours later, after my husband had tucked in our children, he softly bared his soul: “I can handle anything except you putting yourself at risk.”

Those words echo in my head as I self-isolate today. With a sense of déjà vu, I’m again throwing kisses from afar, only this time through a window to my young grandchildren.

… I peer out from my post to watch my grandchildren clamber up the front steps. …My arms ache to hold them close and feel their breath on my face. Meanwhile, in the bathroom by the bedroom, my kids’ old faded plastic waterwheel waits motionless in the tub. I won’t be giving my grandchildren baths here. Not today. Not tomorrow. Nobody knows when it will be safe for folks like me with immunodeficiency to venture out.

What am I supposed to do with the yearning to be close to my grandbabies? That’s a luxury I won’t indulge. Cancer taught me to focus on hope that helps.

…When the cancer recurred in 1993, standard options were palliative. What should I hope for? Back then, the hope of research helped me find the courage needed to enroll in an early-phase trial. The investigational treatment helped me find hope of my illness having meaning because researchers might learn something valuable, even if I didn’t survive to see my oldest child graduate from elementary school. With no confidence in “tomorrow,” I hoped to embrace the parenting I could do “today” from a hospital bed a half a country away.

…And here I am, coping with this 21st-century pandemic by kissing grandchildren through glass. …Their innocent love reminds me that self-isolating offers the best way to fulfill my hope of surviving and of helping my husband and children. Meanwhile, I hope to open my eyes to the joys that remain and to savor each one. Just as cancer did years ago, Covid-19 is teaching me about both the fragility and the hopes of life, and with that knowledge to live most fully.

Wendy Harpham is a retired internist, cancer survivor and author of “Finding Hope That Heals,” a free e-book from the National Breast Cancer Foundation.