“You know why it is that we can’t visit you, don’t you?”
Over the span of just one week, my mother has received five unexpected calls from his ward that he has fallen, a common outcome of his condition. Isolated herself, I once heard her tell the caller, “What am I supposed to do with that information?” The unfortunate reality is that no one is sure how long his facility will be locked down, much like no one knows how long this period of social distancing will be necessary. Because of this, she offered to put herself in complete isolation to still be able to visit him, but to no avail.
In retrospect, as someone who lives on the other side of the world, his deterioration came in the form of receiving continually smaller, shorter and then stranger Facebook messages from him until one day they were gone entirely.