On this date last year, my husband, Les, and I sat shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of unmasked strangers in an historic theater for a concert performance by Little River Band. You remember LRB, and the group’s inescapable 1978 hit, “Reminiscing?” I had convinced Les to go with me to this show, one of more than a dozen concerts we’d been to over the course of the previous two years. While he was plowing through an online master’s degree for his new career as a mental health counselor and working a full-time job in another city, we did not have a lot of meaningful time together. Les had proposed the idea of us going to concerts—lots and lots of concerts—as a fun way to stay connected during the hectic stretch. We dropped some major money on tickets, but we always had something fun to look forward to. We saw legendary acts, including Eagles, James Taylor, Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCartney, Billy Joel, Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen on Broadway, and, well, Little River Band.

Yes, I know, even a second grader would be able to correctly pick “which of these doesn’t belong?” Though LRB may not come to mind as iconic in the way the others do, this show had special meaning for me. As I sat in that beautiful theater (wondering whether any of the people around us were equally nervous about our close proximity and potential spread of the deadly virus that had hijacked the news), I did some reminiscing of my own—back to Red Rocks Amphitheater on Sept. 7, 1981—where my first-ever boyfriend took me to experience my first-ever concert, Little River Band. The Red Rocks show didn’t come up in my search, but this clip from another stop on that tour takes me right back to that beautiful night.

Things got a little blurry for me after last year’s concert. We had dinner out with friends a couple of nights later, and I remember being concerned about a cough I’d picked up somewhere. There was talk of closures and a potential shortage of basic supplies, so I made a run to Costco, where I did my best to act as if all was normal—of course, because I always buy three towers of tuna cans at a time, 12-pack flats of black beans, jumbo bags of pumpkin seeds, cases of bone broth, and the 7-pound bag of quinoa (which I still haven’t opened). We went to Michael’s to purchase canvases and new acrylic paints so that I would have something to keep me distracted if things got scary.

Meanwhile, the nasty cough didn’t go away, and I spent the rest of that month in the guest room, terrified out of my mind that I had coronavirus and would infect my husband. Les drove me to urgent care the next week, but the 12-year-old, unmasked doctor took my temperature and said, “you don’t have a fever, so it isn’t coronavirus.” Wow, have we learned a lot in a year. He gave me a strep test (negative) and a prescription for cough suppressant (which made it worse). The next day, we lost a dear friend suddenly, but couldn’t gather for a funeral to say goodbye. The following week, our governor issued the executive order to close all non-essential businesses, urging us to shelter in place and ride out what we all hoped would be a rough couple of months. And I was still coughing.

It all happened so damned fast.

I thought of my friends who worked in the food service industry and wondered if they would be OK. Should I send them some money? I thought of my friend whose mom was in cancer treatment and wondered if she’d even survive (she’s doing great). My job was already work-from-home and not likely to change. Les entered his counseling career in the nick of time, and business was booming. And yet, life as we knew it seemed over.

And then, of course, came the notifications that so many upcoming concerts we held tickets for were re-scheduled, postponed, re-scheduled again, cancelled. The first was Tony Bennett, and with the recent sad news of his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I’m sure we will never have another chance. Then Jimmy Buffett, The Rolling Stones, matchbox twenty, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical—and then I began to consider the most obvious juxtaposition—what if Little River Band, the first band I ever saw in concert, turned out to also be the last? And what a bummer that would be, given that this new version of LRB bore little-to-no resemblance to the original band I had seen with my first boyfriend 39 years prior. It was a pleasant-enough show, and they performed perfect harmonies on all the right songs, but when I boiled it down, it was pretty much a tribute band with none of the original members. After all the amazing concerts I’d seen in my lifetime, would that be the final hurrah?

And would any of that even matter?

A year into this thing, we are offered faint glimmers of hope for a new normal, but it has come with an excruciating price tag. There are too many people still struggling through illness (COVID-19 and otherwise), separated from loved ones (either by miles or a fingerprinted window pane), fearful of eviction notices when the moratoriums end, terrified for their health as they await vaccination, exhausted after 12 months on the front line in hospitals, discouraged by unemployment, living with so much uncertainty, and the grim fact that more than half a million lives have been lost.

Jimmy Buffett has rescheduled again for April—next month. But is that even appropriate? Les and I won’t be going if it means standing shoulder-to-shoulder next to a bunch of unmasked strangers, partying like it’s 1981. It was excusable last year when so much was unknown, but not anymore. The matchbox twenty show has been rescheduled for late July, but I’m not sure I’ll be ready then either, unless we are in a good place with vaccination rates. I still believe our COVID-19 sentence could have been a rough couple of months, if only more people had listened to the health experts rather than loudmouthed politicians. But here we are.

Life as we knew it may well be over, and “normal” may be completely different from here forward, and that will be uncomfortable for people who want everything to stay exactly as it always was. I miss the anticipation and excitement of live shows, but we have also thoroughly enjoyed the creative remote experiences artists such as Bon Jovi and Melissa Etheridge have provided, right in our living room. Little River Band wasn’t the same last year as in 1981, but the group put on a fun show. And if it turns out to be the last-ever concert I see—well, then I’m glad I was there, with the last-ever boyfriend of my lifetime. ❤