Class of 2020 — Special Circumstances Produce Special People

In Honor of the Graduating Class of 2020 I’m not sharing my graduation Pic.

The year 2020 has been a strange and historic year, for all of us, all over the world. No one would have thought that this pandemic, the sheltering in place and an almost total paralysis of life as we knew it, was coming.

Noor Mackhoul, GSU Graduate 2020, facing downtown Atlanta during Coronavirus Pandemic

My year started on a grim note as my mother was very sick. She was admitted to hospital on December 29, 2019 and on New Year’s Eve we received the news that she is not doing well and that it looks like she was not going to make it. They said it is a matter of “a few weeks.” She was released in mid January to home hospice. I spent many nights by her side, at the hospital first and then at home. I did not leave her because we thought we only have a short time, plus she needed assistance 24/7. My sisters came from Lebanon to help. The start of 2020 was heavy as I expressed so many times in my yoga classes. I used to say, “Wow this year has been too long already.” I also remember how I felt empty several times before the Coronavirus Outbreak and the quarantine that ensued. The “weird feeling of emptiness” that I spoke about in class, was just my perception that no one shared back. As I drove to work, and although the traffic would be normal, I would feel that the streets were empty. I would feel that the classes were thin as if people were not there although the number of people in class was relatively normal. I felt a nothingness around me right before the pandemic. Now, in retrospect, it seems like I was seeing this time but early on before we had arrived to it. In my mind, I reasoned, that the feeling was a reflection of my heart as we were going through a lot, my family and I, because of the fact that my mom was not well and we were preparing for that final goodbye and all that sadness and fear that was overwhelming my heart.