Like most days, I had eggs on toast today for breakfast. With coffee and orange juice. And of course, being an Aussie I put Vegemite on my toast before putting the eggs on top. I love it. It’s a habit I picked up from my mother, who sadly passed away in July last year. My mother even bought me the electric pan that I still use to cook my eggs each day.
Strange that of all the things that I have to remind me of her, it’s the electric pan that brings back memories of my mother. I miss her every day.
My mother was simple and pure, but complex in so many ways, huge hearted, flawed and beautiful at the same time. The funeral service for her was delayed for some weeks after her death to allow my sister in Hong Kong to get back, suffer through two weeks in quarantine and then assist our other grieving sister with the funeral arrangements. And then another two weeks quarantine after the funeral when she returned to Hong Kong.
Sadly, I was unable to leave Thailand to get to the funeral as I would not have been able to re-enter Thailand at that time on the residency visa I had. Our mother died of cancer, but the COVID pandemic prevented so many of us from traveling to see her one last time. Broke my heart. Broke all our hearts.
I speak to clients and good friends every day by phone, WhatsApp, Facebook and Skype. Very little face to face except for meetings as and when we are able to. Everyone I speak to has a story to tell. Darren’s father in the UK passed away last year, just weeks before my mother in Australia. He couldn’t go back for the funeral. Brandon’s whole family were infected by COVID and thankfully all are fine. Same story for Ron and his whole family. Others I know haven’t seen their wives, husbands or children for months, some more than a year. So many of us have lost parents, sick relatives and tragically children through this.
To me the real tragedy here is not so much the virus itself, but the isolation that this has brought upon us at every level. Separation, anxiety, depression, and it goes on. I am fortunate to be here with my wife, but I haven’t seen my daughter since February 2020 and likely will not see her until maybe next year, if I am lucky.
For businesses around the world the pandemic has been equally as devasting. Just need to look around the closed shops and increasing unemployment. Many businesses are struggling to survive, while others have emerged as huge growth markets.
But this morning, while cooking my eggs and thinking of my mother, I thought further about the people that I work with. They too have lost family members, have struggled with months and months of lockdowns, and are dealing with anxiety on a much greater scale than we can possibly imagine.
It is in times like these that we need to communicate more, not less. I try my best to email as little as possible as I am very old-school. Email is great to confirm and inform but not communicate. It shows no emotion, provides no human feedback, and can be misinterpreted so easily and often is.
Nothing beats a face-to-face meeting over coffee and, failing that, a phone call or even better a video call with a smiley face. Those of us who work alone at home can feel totally isolated and not actually talk to anyone for a whole day at a time. But thankfully we have technology to bridge gaps. I would rather spend my day talking face-to-face with my colleagues and clients than anything else in my work day.
My heart goes out to all people who have lost loved ones and are feeling isolated by this faceless pandemic. But every time I cook my eggs and think of my mother, I remind myself to pick up the phone, connect on a Skype video call or grab a coffee meeting with friends, family, clients and anyone else who feels the way I do.
This is a new world order we have been handed. I was going to say ‘brave’ new world but that’s too cliché and I am not sure we are really that brave, more like surviving. Nothing shows us more of the profound effect of COVID19, than what I see as the gap in current global communications – how we do business, how we maintain relationships and communicate effectively, how we reassure our colleagues, clients and business partners that we are all still effective and present. And that we care.
Those of you who know me, and have read my blogs before, will know I think that old fashioned face-to-face coffee-in-hand albeit-via-video-chats are even more critical than ever before.
