A letter to his spouse from JB

 

To all the spouses of the COVID-19 Pandemic Frontline Workers:

Thank you for your love and support during some of the hardest days we’ve ever had to face in our careers.

Thank you for understanding why we are late, again, because another patient needed to be cared for before we could come home.

Thank you for knowing that chronic post traumatic stress is a real thing, and it can eat at you slowly over days and weeks and months. And even though you can’t fix it, you provide a normalcy in life that is a better cure than any medicine.

Thank you for being the sounding board for all the things we want to say out loud or on social media when we are tired and frustrated and angry.... and thank you for gently encouraging us NOT to say those things outside of our private conversations.

Thank you for being present.

Thank you for being aware of what we need, even if we don’t even realize we need it.

Thank you for intercepting calls and texts and emails and messages so that we can have a little more rest while at home.

Thank you for keeping our home a refuge.

Thank you for doing the laundry.

Thank you for cooking meals.

Thank you for doing the dishes.

Thank you for taking care of the pets.

Thank you for taking care of the yard.

Thank you for taking care of the farm.

Thank you for taking care of the kids.

Thank you for schooling them when you weren’t expecting to... and certainly not alone.

Thank you for reminding us that this is a season, a long season, but one we will get through and be stronger together because of it.

Thank you for all these things and more.

And for doing them when we don’t say thank you.

And for doing them even if you mess up sometimes.

And for doing them when you don’t get support and appreciation from social media or commercials or celebrities.

And for doing them when you feel like your spouse is doing something that “matters” and “all I’m doing is the laundry... again!”

You are the reason we are able to keep doing what we are doing.

We love you.

Thank you.

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John Kitsteiner, MD is an emergency medicine physician in East Tennessee. This was written with his wife at the forefront of his thoughts.

“

Wendi

, I wouldn’t and couldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for you!”