People of Rochester - Marika
I met Marika and her dog, Gizmo, in the garden behind the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Marika's from Colorado, and she came out here five years ago to visit a couple of cousins who live in Rochester.
She fell in love with the culture and the people, and she likes how there's "a little bit of everything." She says, "In a few minutes, I can get to water, this peaceful garden, here, and my neighborhood... there's arts and culture and good food, and the east coast has more history than Colorado does."
When I asked her if she, or anyone she knew had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, she said, "Lots of people I know." Marika's a funeral director, so her potential exposure to the coronavirus is beyond just her friends and family. She's been in the funeral industry for 15 years and was in it before she moved out here. "We've had a busy couple months."
I asked if any of her coworkers have gotten sick with the virus. She said, "I think we all had it in January, because we all got very, very ill, and all of us missed several weeks of work on and off."
The funeral home where she works initially tried to limit how many staff members were in the building at at time, so the staff worked in shifts. The idea was that if one shift got sick, then the other shift could take over, but that only lasted the first two weeks into the quarantine, and then, "we got so busy we were all just working overtime."
Marika said that one positive aspect of the quarantine is that the community is "sticking together—the people that are staying home and are actively keeping social distancing. And all of that is pretty wonderful and impressive to see humans working together."
She has gone to the public market to buy produce, because she feels more comfortable being outside and not touching anything, and she visits the public market regularly, anyway, just to support local businesses. Other than going out to obtain food, Marika's gone nowhere for the past couple of months.
Marika's positive experience of the public market was different from mine. She said everyone was wearing masks and maintaining social distance, and vendors were wearing gloves. But she visited the market on Thursdays, and my experience, in which over a dozen people weren’t wearing masks, and most people were ignoring social distancing guidelines, was on a Saturday, which is typically the public market's busiest day.
A typical day for Marika is to arrive at the funeral home by 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. After catching up with her coworkers, they inspect and disinfect the entire building, repeating the process multiple times a day. "We disinfect the building first thing in the morning, we do it before we go and grab lunch, we do it after every family comes in, and at the end of the day before we leave. That's our new normal."
They don't wear masks around each other, "because we spend so much time together anyway, and we're all quarantined outside of work." But when Marika meets with families, during the day to make funeral arrangements, she wears a mask.
"One of the parts of my job," Marika said, "is bringing decedents into our care from where they passed away (nursing homes, hospitals, residences), so that's typically included in the day." She's also an embalmer, so sometimes that's part of her schedule. And her funeral home is still conducting private visitations with families, private funerals, and private burials, with a maximum of 10 people, and all six feet apart. That's part of her everyday routine as well.
For recreation, Marika paints (she's an artist, and currently she's into acrylic paint), does a lot of reading, and walks around her neighborhood. Before the shutdown, Marika spent a lot of time in coffee shops and some local restaurants, and she enjoyed dancing and live music.
"I miss going dancing and live music so much," she said. "That was very much my therapy at the end of a really long, stressful week, to go and get good exercise, good community."
"Everything is a little bit more work, and a little more effort, even though we're doing a little bit less."
Marika thinks it will "take a long time before we get" back to "normal." From a professional point of view, she knows it will be a long time "before we're able to have funerals and calling hours the way that we used to."
She said when her funeral home's reopening phase occurs (which will probably be Phase 4), they're going to be allowing more people into the building, but they have to "change things up with respect to what door they come in and how they leave..."
"We talked about having to put red rope in between the family and the people coming in, so they're not hugging—all things that are kind of horrible and unfortunate for those circumstances, but will be our new normal for probably a long time."
Marika hopes that, at some point, there is a balance where people can still go out and have a sense of community and see each other again. She'll continue wearing a mask for awhile, because in her job, she's in a position where there's a higher risk that she can infect other people. And she's become very aware of all of the things that she touches in a day, so she expects that she'll keep paying attention to that. "Everything is a little bit more work, and a little more effort, even though we're doing a little bit less," she says.
Marika doesn’t get together with friends outside. Partially for her own safety, but mostly for theirs, because, she's exposed to a lot through her job. She says, "I would be heartbroken if I was the reason that somebody got sick. I've been avoiding the public as much as possible."
Marika says the pandemic has given her an opportunity to learn how to better self-care, because she has to. And it's given her more compassion toward other people and their situations, because right now, everybody is struggling. "I hope, when this is over, that my compassion piece and my self-care piece will stick," she says. "But I certainly will be returning back to dancing and seeing my friends and family."