672-day correspondence give 4 seniors a unique look at pandemic and friendship
Correspondence helped the group through some of the pandemic’s darkest days
A writing project that's been ongoing for nearly 700 days, and is still going strong, has kept a circle of seniors from the London, Ont. area connected during some of the darkest days of the pandemic.
The group has been swapping email messages, marking the days in the subject line, and discovering that they now have a unique record of their friendship and global history.
"It's like they've become therapy for us to cope with the situation," said Diane O'Shea, one of the four digital pen pals. "It's been good in lots of ways."
Many people have found new ways to stay in touch with loved ones these past two years when lockdowns have made visiting unsafe. There's Zoom socials, Whatsapp messages and text. But this group opted for emails.
One friend will kick things off the day with an email that may include a question to the group. That will get the conversation going with others chatting back-and-for, until it begins again the following day.
"Back in March of 2020, we were feeling certainly very frustrated and it was Susan who started it," said O'Shea. "And she started this email with, 'Day, whatever it was.'"
"We've certainly learned a lot about a variety of different things: it could be something about food, something about housing, it could be something about our upbringings," she adds.
Even if they miss a day, the next note is labelled sequentially. That's allowed them to keep a tally of how many days have passed since the project began.
Getting through darker days
Their email messages have also offered support during tough times.
"We had a dear, dear friend that was not well, and had been coping with cancer for more than 25 years and passed away about a month after the pandemic started in 2020," O'Shea said. "So, that was very difficult. We couldn't grieve in the sense of going to a funeral or participating in that."
O'Shea said that her circle found solace through the email messages.
As for what will happen to all of these emails they've written over hundreds of days, O'Shea admits that she doesn't know. It will be a good question for the group.
What she does know is that she's looking forward to getting back with her friends in-person to resuming quilting and talking.