The evening of March 23, 2020, Brown County received news of its first case of COVID-19. News of the second case arrived March 27 and the third on March 29.

Nine hundred fifty more would follow in the year to come, with 40 of those cases ending in death.

For those of us the virus didn’t personally reach — and regardless of how we felt about it — it still left a big impact on our ability to live a “normal” life.

We asked our Facebook readers to volunteer to have some “super-honest conversations” about how their lives have been altered in the past year. This story below is the first in a three-week series titled “Our year of flux.”

Among the interviews we’ve done so far, we feel like we don’t yet have the important perspectives of teens/college students, or people working in a service industry, such as a restaurant or hotel. So, if that description fits you, and you’d like to share your story, please send a message to [email protected] or give us a call at 812-988-2221.

 

Canceled concert gigs and suddenly instructing students through a computer screen meant Keith Collins had more free time.

He decided to spend it with his father as he battled heart failure in an assisted living facility.

For six weeks, the facility where is father was living was locked down, but that restriction ended in April. Collins, 47, went down to Tennessee as soon as he could.

Collins’ mother passed in November 2019 and his father, a very social person, had never really had to be alone. The couple had lived in an apartment in the independent living part of the facility.

At the beginning of summer, the facility was locked down again due to an outbreak of COVID-19. Collins’ father’s health was declining, so he and his sister began discussing bringing him back to the home their parents still owned, where Collins would stay and they would pay for at-home nursing care.

“When I brought this to the attention of administrators of his facility, they didn’t like that because they already had enough vacancies at their facility that they needed the income, I think,” Collins said.

Instead, the assisted living facility decided to hire Collins to take care of his father.

As his father’s health continued to decline and he needed to move to the full-time care wing, Collins worked with the facility to allow his father to remain in his apartment. Moving him to the full-time care wing would have meant Collins could no longer be with him due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Hospice was brought in to help, and the facility provided all the meals and did laundry and cleaning.

When he had to leave for a doctor’s appointment of his own, or needed a break, Collins’ sister would come and stay. She is a director for a lab at the University of Colorado Denver that focuses in genetic testing. After COVID-19 hit the United States, her lab was tasked with coming up with protocols for COVID-19 testing.

Their father passed away on Feb. 6 from heart failure. Collins and his sister were able to be by his side, holding his hand.

Collins has four older adopted siblings, and the youngest passed away last July. She was comatose and alone when she passed because of COVID-19 restrictions.

“We know that we’re lucky, and that he was lucky. We try to not forget that, what it could have been like and what it is like,” he said.

His father once worked for North American Aviation, a contractor for NASA, and he did electrical work on the Saturn V rocket used in the Apollo mission. “He was on the headset when Apollo 13 said, ‘Houston we have a problem,'” he said.

He also a part of different launch teams, and received patches from astronauts who went to the moon. Collins now has some of those.

After that program ended, the family moved to Georgia where Collins’ father worked on the electronic components of industrial printing presses. Collins and his sister were both born in Georgia. After their father retired, their parents moved back to Tennessee.

“He made friends everywhere he went and he laughed the whole way, telling jokes. He could charm the pants off of snakes. He was one of those people who was everybody’s friend,” Collins said.

“He didn’t know a stranger. He would talk to everybody in line at the grocery store or whatever. That was his superpower.”

Back home in Nashville, Indiana, Collins and his husband, Domonic Potorti, had been adjusting to life without social outlets.

Collins is an adjunct lecturer at the Indiana University in the Historical Performance Institute and Potorti works in the Office of International Services. The couple have both been able to work their IU jobs from home, but internet reliability in Brown County has been a challenge.

Collins is also a freelance orchestra musician, playing the bassoon. The gigs stopped when COVID-19 hit, so he began instructing students online.

As a freelance musician, he is expected to buy his own plane tickets and then be reimbursed by the orchestra or whoever he is working with for a show. After shows were canceled, he was left with tickets and no reimbursement. “To be fair, a few of them did go ahead and pay at least part of the fee and the flight, but that was the exception, not the rule,” he said.

Collins lost two-thirds of his income due to the pandemic, but the couple was able to rely on their paychecks from IU. He tried to get unemployment assistance, but gave up trying after all of the hoops he had to jump through.

Losing income meant putting off important home improvement projects they had hoped to tackle, like getting rid of termites.

They also put off gathering with friends and seeing family out of state.

“That’s just been the worst. I love to hang out with friends, talk, go out to eat or have a cookout and see various family members, so us not being able to do that has been the main problem aside from the financial aspect.”

“There were also some family members who didn’t take COVID very seriously. That was a little more awkward. Especially given Dad’s situation, we were not willing to compromise on that.”

Towards the end of his father’s life, Collins was able to stay with him in his apartment despite COVID-19 restrictions. But before then, he would sometimes spend time at his parents’ other property, alone. “Having that distance was important, I think, for helping me keep my sanity,” he said.

“It allowed me to take stock and keep in perspective, the best that I am able,” he said. “Not to say I’m always able to keep on the sunny side, but given everything that has happened, I think I am relatively OK.”

When the concerts were canceled, he found a new purpose in caring for his father. After the funeral, he was again left questioning, “Now what?”

“I had gone from this one important thing in my life, which was music, to this other thing, and suddenly that was taken away too, and there has not been anything to replace it,” he said. The next concert he is scheduled to perform will not happen until December.

He lost his mother in 2019, his older sister in 2020, and now his father in 2021. When life became tough, Collins said he was lucky to have his husband to lean on. “He told me, whatever you need I will do my best to make it happen,” he said.

His sister is his best friend, and “having her as been a real Godsend.”

Finding new recipes online to cook or binge-watching “The Mandalorian” are some of the pandemic pleasures that helped.

“I let myself take a break from practicing the instruments, which I haven’t done in probably years and years, so not having to worry about being ready for a recording sessions or will this big solo next weekend work out or not … that’s been kind of nice,” he said.

He is most looking forward to hugging his friends and family without worrying if he just spread a virus to them.

That social side of him was a little gift from his dad.

“We’ve all been ‘on’ the last year. We’re on guard, we’re on edge, or we’re whatever. So once we really get through this, and to be able to relax, like, that will feel amazing.”