Oxygen

My paternal grandmother lived with us for the last decade of her life.  As kids, we thought she was old,  But, she was only in her early 60s at that time.  Well, back then it was a big deal if one lived until 60, and an even bigger deal if they completed 80.  So, yes, she was "old" in that context.

In the final third of that decade that she spent with us, grandmother started having breathing problems.  The heart and lung expert at the local hospital ran a few tests and zeroed in on the problem: An enlarged heart.

He concluded that it was not a new thing, but was perhaps congenital.  It was, therefore, up to the heart to keep working as long as it would before it stopped.

To relieve her of temporary breathing problems, we got her a portable oxygen tank at home.  If memory serves me well, that was rarely used.  But, it was there, nonetheless, in a corner in her bedroom.  I suppose it provided psychological comfort than anything else.

A couple of decades ago, a friend was diagnosed with lung cancer.  A middle-aged man who had never smoked in his life, nor had he spent time in the company of smokers.  In his final months, he too needed oxygen from an external device.

This was now in a new country and more than three decades after my grandmother's experience. Technology had vastly advanced.  A small machine in a corner of the house operated 24x7, and the long tubing delivered oxygen to wherever he was at home.  While the oxygen tank for grandmother was mostly for psychological support, this machine was literally keeping the friend alive and comfortable enough.

When healthy, we don't think about the breathing and oxygen.  It is only when things are not working well do we seem to understand, appreciate, and respect the things and people that make for a regular life.  How often do we pause to think about the phenomenal job that the heart and lungs and plasma and oxygen and ....?

COVID-19 compels us to separate out the fundamentals of life from all the fluff that otherwise preoccupies us.  The forced physical distancing is making us rethink the ways in which we have been distancing ourselves from friends, family, colleagues, neighbors, ... We are humbled by a virus that is invisible.  A virus that goes straight to the lungs, and makes it difficult to breathe.

If only we paused, even in the absence of any pandemic, to thank the cosmos for the miraculously normal lives that we are lucky to live!