When I was growing up, my parents and their friends sometimes would talk about the day President Kennedy was assassinated.
Later on, the neighbors discussed where they were when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
I’m sure anyone who has been alive for a quarter century can vividly recall when America was attacked on 9/11.
In all our lives, there are things that happen. And then there are events that are so profound they become the pillars of our collective memory. For the senior living sector, COVID-19 has the potential to become one such pillar.
Part of the challenge of putting the pandemic in its proper perspective is that we are still very much dealing with it. The struggle to find adequate personal protective equipment and other supplies continues today. As does the challenge of managing more expenses with dwindling resources. Then there’s the chase for a possible vaccine and cure.
Nor do we yet know how future business models and caregiving practices will differ, only that they surely will.
Yet as strange as it might now seem, we eventually will move on to other matters and concerns. In fact, it may not be too far in the future when a conversation-starter at a trade show goes something like this: “Remember that year we had COVID-19?”
As if any of us living through it could ever forget.
