COVID-19 Strikes Close to Home

First, over a month ago, unexpectedly, came the news that Sissy's good friend's parents were stuck on the cruise ship docked off Japan, and the dad had to be hospitalized, was on a ventilator, was experiencing multiple organ failure.

Then, more recently, the mom of a close friend of mine, out of the blue, while traveling, hospitalized, up and down on a ventilator, and yesterday, she passed.

So for her, In Memoriam Pancit. 

The family cannot have a funeral under the circumstances; I cannot drive down to comfort my friend since both our states are under orders to stay home, so I called and cried with her.  She had mentioned offhand that whenever I next have pancit, I should remember her mom, it was a tradition for them; as we hung up, she said maybe she would see if she could find ramen to improvise pancit for her kids for lunch.

I told our other close friends of this as we were coordinating by text on what to send to her family.  None of us is Filipino and none of us had had pancit.  But we have YouTube and Google and had each stocked up with some form of noodle.  So we each made our own improvised version of pancit and took photos and texted them to my friend to let her know we love her and are remembering her mom.

Coincidentally, I was invited to my first virtual dinner party - which was today.  And the pancit was my dinner.  And it was good!  And not difficult at all.

I think I will keep it in my repertoire, consider this as part of her mom's legacy, and remember the warm, intelligent, strong woman who left her homeland for the States back in the day when there weren't so many women physicians, built a beautiful life for her family, raised a strong daughter, loved her grandkids, was strong and active and traveling her whole life - up until a global pandemic caught her up and took her too soon.

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