The Last Show
A night in March 2020 that was nearly normal
One year ago tonight, I was dancing my ass off at a concert. The local band snarls was celebrating the release of Burst, its first fantastic album, and the music hummed in the humid air while the room buzzed with energy that only just-might-be-about-to-become-rock-stars can pull from a crowd. Fans spilled over the rafters and beer spilled on the floor, and there we were, a thousand of us, packed into the room, breathing in the notes, experiencing every beat of the bass drum together. It was one of those rare moments as a concertgoer when you thought to yourself, “Someday, I’ll say I was there.”
I was right, but not for the reasons I assumed at the time.
Earlier that evening, my husband and I ate dinner in an Indian restaurant across the street. As we waited for our food, a Facebook friend posted that a contact who worked in a hospital told him Ohio had its first Covid case. It was an unconfirmed rumor that made me shudder. I remember trying to talk myself down, telling myself that it might not even be true, that it was probably linked to travel, that a single case didn’t mean it had spread. Working in media, I’d been following the stories very closely, taking Covid more seriously than most of my friends at the time. I knew this moment was inevitable.
Just days before, the Arnold Sports Festival that brought competitors from around the world to our city each year had announced its cancellation, affecting not only the competitors and spectators, but dealing the first devastating blow to the downtown hospitality industry— a preview of the halt to come. So news that the virus had, allegedly, found its way into one of our hospitals wasn’t a surprise. Still, it made me pause, however briefly, squinting across the street at the “Sold Out” sign, scrawled in marker, on the concert venue door. Should we be crowding into that room? Was it safe?
We pushed on. We rocked out. We came home and paid the babysitter.
We haven’t seen a live show since.
