‘Oh shit. It’s here.’

Mariah Clark spent the year on the front lines of the pandemic as an emergency department nurse at UW Health in Madison. 

She spent the earliest days of 2020 reading about the virus in news reports and journal articles. But the pandemic became real in February when her hospital treated Wisconsin’s first patient infected with COVID-19. 

“I’ll never forget that first COVID patient,” Clark said. “When that first case rolled into the department I remember having that sensation of, ‘Oh shit. It’s here.’ And wondering how it was going to change everything.”

Clark’s ensuing year offered “strange dualities.” The slow days waiting for the storm gave way to the trauma of watching friends and patients succumb to the deadly virus. She watched helplessly as the pandemic spiraled out of control in Wisconsin and state politics stymied attempts at a coherent response. 

In that tragedy, Clark also found hope. 

“There were aspects of COVID that let us really connect back to the fact that we as nurses are there to care for whole people — and not just assemblages of parts that aren’t working right at the time,” Clark said.

“We had seen friends or family or co-workers who had gotten ill. We could picture ourselves there. And it felt — a lot of the time — a lot more human.”

‘Most of us were just surviving’

When Jessica Barrera revisits her thoughts from the pandemic’s earliest days, she can’t help but recall her anxiety. How could she forget? 

People stopped traveling when the coronavirus pandemic hit, costing the 41-year-old single mother her job at an airport shuttle service in Eau Claire. She spent months waiting for unemployment benefits while the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development denied the assistance to part-time workers like her who also receive federal disability aid.

“There was so much that was out of my control,” Barrera said. “It makes me feel tired, almost, to hear myself.” 

She added: “A year ago, most of us were just surviving day-to-day: emotionally, mentally, physically, financially, just to get through to the next day.”

But things are looking up for Barrera. She’s found new, meaningful work helping adults with special needs find jobs. And her 11-year-old son Niko has returned to school in-person two days a week. That was after finishing the previous school year and beginning the new one virtually. Barrera now wishes she could reassure her March 2020 self. 

“I would let her know that you get used to wearing a mask — it’s not so weird after the first little while. And to just keep your faith that things will get better,” she said.

‘This process really made me stronger’

For Adija Greer-Smith, owner of Confectionately Yours bakery in Milwaukee, 2020 wasn’t all doom and gloom. 

Like many businesses, the bakery shuttered for several months in the spring and summer. But Greer-Smith saw huge success after re-opening in July. That included forging business deals with the Green Bay Packers and Milwaukee Bucks. 

“It opened so many doors of opportunity,” Greer-Smith said, acknowledging that 2020 proved  “catastrophic” in other ways. She rode an “emotional roller coaster,” with both of her kids learning virtually from home and her husband grappling with a COVID-19 diagnosis. (He is now recovered and vaccinated.) 

Confectionately Yours sits in the Sherman Phoenix, a space for small business led by people of color. Fire damaged the building — previously a bank —  in 2016 as Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood experienced civil unrest following the fatal police shooting of Sylville Smith. The Phoenix rose from those ashes. Greer-Smith knew she would encounter obstacles while launching her business in 2018. 

“Clearly, this was a part of that process,” she said. “This process really made me stronger.”

When the bakery first closed in the spring, Greer-Smith shifted her energy into baking cookies for health care workers. Her team ultimately donated more than 20,000 baked goods, she said. 

Now, she encourages others to put their energy into helping people. 

“My hope for just, people, is that this year would have taught us all to just love more and hate less, because life is so very precious,” she said. 

‘Content to be who I am and where I am in time’

Beverly Blietz, an 86-year-old Door County resident, kept a busy social calendar before the pandemic, even driving for Uber in her spare time. 

But she found herself confined to her small apartment when then the independent living facility in Sister Bay where she lived tightened restrictions last spring.

“I grieved that time was being snatched from me,” she said. “The loss of the old normal meant the loss of so much that was meaningful in my life.” 

She grew increasingly depressed, worrying that a summer of isolation would be her last on earth.  

“The older I get, the faster the time passes,” she said. 

That triggered her to move out of the facility, entering a condo where she grasped more control over her life.

Blietz said that the past pandemic year has shifted what she values.

“More than ever, the importance of my family and relationships have taken precedence over the more frenzied activity of a daily calendar,” she said. 

“I am content to be who I am and where I am in time.”