If I could capture the feeling of Covid in an image, this would be it. We meet in the parking lot like every other time, my folks and I, to connect at a distance.

My dad is mostly quiet; his body still; his eyelids heavy with the weight of degenerative disease. He sits and listens to us talk, sometimes reacting with a smile, a laugh, maybe a word; sometimes staring into space as he appears to be in-between two worlds, slowly slipping away from us.

As I say goodbye he turns and reaches out toward me with a sense of silent desperation; mustering up what little energy he can despite his infirmity. The sudden surge of movement seems dramatic in contrast with his stillness.

I see his grey eyes clouded with sadness as he stretches out his fingers, searching for a touch we both haven’t felt in months.

I’m caught between my responsibility to protect my parents and my longing to hold them tight, so in a clumsy compromise I offer my dad my elbow. It feels almost offensive, like I’m giving him the cold shoulder.

But he grips it; he grips onto my elbow like he’s gripping onto life itself, and I bask in the feeling of connection amid a time of separation and alienation; in the profound beauty and the melancholy and the bittersweet strangeness of this moment.