CALGARY -- By now everyone has lost something to the pandemic.
It may not be a job or a life, but graduating high school students will almost certainly miss out on the final day of classes, crossing the stage to accept their diploma, wearing their grad dress.
"To have something you’re looking forward to for so long get all of a sudden taken away was really hard," says Grace Whiteley, a 17-year-old Grade 12 student who has been looking forward to the coming weeks for years.
"I shouldn’t be thinking about these things, there are more important things that Ishould be putting my feelings towards, and I couldn’t help myself to feel upset."
In one of her last high school assignments, Whiteley penned an essay that eloquently lays out her struggle to reconcile her own sense of loss with the losses in her own family.
Her grandmother is 89 and in a long-term care facility, confined to her room, alone for six hour shifts as staff try to limit the spread of COVID-19 and keep residents as safe as possible.
Whiteley’s complete essay is below.
