The extended family

Friends are the family we choose, and the pandemic stands testament to this reality

It is often said that friends are the family we choose, and there is no better time than the pandemic to stand testimony to that statement. Call it a happy coincidence or a stroke of luck, it so happened that a few of our friends came to start living in the same high-rise apartments that we stay in. That, combined with the friends we have made thanks to our five-year-old fur-child, has made this place a home far more than we could have hoped for. And so in the middle of the worst-possible lockdowns and deaths in the family and people falling sick all around us, we managed to be there for one another in ways we didn’t think possible. In the darkest moments, we reached out to one another. When we lost a loved one and couldn’t deal with the grief, we had friends coming in and working through it with us. When a friend fell sick, we sent food, because that is all you could do. When someone’s parents were in the hospital, we sent their details to our circle to see what leads could help them get better. When it all got too overwhelming, we fell and we picked each other up. Sometimes literally. And it wasn’t just those who stayed nearby. It was friends back in hometowns who reached out and said they could check on our parents if needed. It was friends abroad who would call in panic because the news was so dismal and they didn’t know what to believe. It was friends who decided to come on a video call on a birthday, so we wouldn’t feel so alone and cut off.