I woke up on Easter yesterday feeling depressed. This is not unusual for a person with bipolar disorder but it is somewhat unusual for me – my go to emotion is anxiety that may be caused by simultaneous lows and highs. But this was all lows. What was bothering me was that me and my teenage daughter were planning to do a social distancing grocery drop at my 83 year old mother’s condo. She is a widow and lives alone. There has been a no visitor in and no person out mandate in place for several weeks. I know she has been feeling very isolated because of covid-19 (we talk on the phone twice a day) and has had very little actual face-to-face time. As a daughter I feel guilty about not having made social distance grocery drops on a weekly basis prior to this time but I have had low white blood cell counts because of the meds I take. So it has been important for me to shelter in place as much as possible with a compromised immune system. I don’t have any real message behind this post except to say I think it made my Mom’s day for us to visit and chat outside for a half hour at the social distancing space despite the fact that I had reservations/depressed feelings about going. I guess I pushed through the depression to the other side so to speak. But I still worry about things like her contracting the illness and not being able to be there for her. I feel like I need(ed) to put my immune system first but I also feel guilty for not doing more for my Mom.

Does anybody else have a story of how they have stayed connected with an elderly parent through all this? Or even before this all occurred?