“I always felt so much pride,” Wang-Polagruto, 47, a senior clinical research coordinator for University of California, Davis Health, said of the 41 gymnastics meets Gabriella competed in. “I was so proud of her and her courage for getting out there and doing these scary, difficult skills.”
For nearly all of the past year, Covid-19 restrictions prohibited indoor gymnastics practice where Gabriella lives. Her coaches tried to make the best of it, having the gymnasts lift weights and stretch outside, Wang-Polagruto said.
But not being able to practice routines or learn new skills in the gym started to wear on Gabriella, who had been doing gymnastics since she was 3, Wang-Polagruto said. And when the family got the news last month that practice would finally be able to resume indoors at a very limited capacity, Gabriella surprised everyone by announcing that she no longer wished to return.
“That was really, really hard to hear,” Wang-Polagruto said. “We were prepared for her exiting her lifelong sport at some point in time, but not this way.”
Wang-Polagruto is hopeful that Gabriella will find new passions. She has expressed interest in cheerleading.
But for others, what the pandemic stole cannot be filled with something else.
Navarro, the Louisiana store employee, lost a grandmother and an aunt to the coronavirus. He was unable to visit them to say goodbye, and Zoom funerals with far-flung relatives, he said, did not bring him closure.
“Even with as great as the technology is today, it still doesn’t bring you that warmth that you need between you and a loved one,” he said.
Why this felt like the longest year ever
In addition to the challenges the year brought, for many people, it also felt impossibly long.
Susan Sedlacko, 26, of Columbus, Ohio, looks back at her final photo before the pandemic — a picture of a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in early March 2020 with friends — and is in disbelief that it was only a year ago.
“March felt like it was four years long last year,” said Sedlacko, a youth development coordinator at a nonprofit that serves children and families. “There was a point that I forgot we had gone to Memphis because so much happened since then.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
