Reflecting on our COVID-19 year

For you who look forward to The Geezer Forum starting again, circle May 25 on your calendar. After 14-plus months of not meeting in person, the Geezer Forum will again gather in the Community Room at Columbia Bank on Tuesday, May 25, 2:30-4 p.m.

Partly, we’ll meet as a “test run,” to see if meeting regularly again beginning in September will be a good thing to do. (We normally don’t meet in the summer.) But mostly, we will gather to visit about how the COVID-19 “year” has impacted us.

Helping us reflect on our COVID-19 year will be three community resource persons: Eric Ridgway, director of The Human Connection; Tami Feyen, manager of Bonner Community Hospice; and Caroline Davis, a counselor with The Human Connection. We’ll share stories and insights about how these difficult months seem much longer than a calendar might suggest.

I expect our being together will have a bitter-sweet taste to it. We will enjoy simply seeing one another in this forum setting after so long apart. But the topic of the day might not be easy for some of us. We’ve each experienced this COVID period in fingerprint-unique ways.

Some of us grieve from losing family members or dear friends from the virus. Some of us grieve for less traumatic reasons, yet still we grieve. Some of us have experienced financial hardships, fractured relationships, adjustments born from significant inconveniences.

I would guess all of us have been impacted by some kind of identifiable, or unknown, fear. That may have come from the imposed isolation we all experienced in some form or another.

Our resource speakers will be available to help us share our stories, but to also offer insights into grieving, the dynamics of isolation, and even the way our brain health (neurobiology) impacts how we’ve endured in these times. But we won’t stop with developing a list of “woes.”

We also want to hear stories of persistence, perseverance, hopefulness. I’m partial to a description of hope that says “hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then doing the hope-work that helps the evidence change.”

You who might know me, even a little, know I’m a hopeful person. Even in bleak times, I look hard for reasons to get up in the morning, or find a glimmer of kindness in a harsh moment. I know many of you share that determination also.

This is the tone I expect to see at our May 25 Geezer Forum, even if our stories rightfully begin with the challenges of isolation, or grief, or fear. So please consider joining us that day in the Community Room of Columbia Bank, 2:30-4 p.m.

Oh yes, one last word. We will be observing common-sense precautions because the CO virus is still around. That means we will maintain social distance as best we can. Masks will be strongly recommended.

Many of us will have already had the COVID vaccine, but masks are more than a social nicety. In spite of their controversial nature, masks likely provide a degree of protection, even if it’s more emotional than biological. See you on May 25.

Paul Graves, M.Div. is lead geezer-in-training for Elder Advocates, a consulting ministry on aging issues. Contact Paul at 208-610-4971 or elderadvocates@nctv.com.