Shortly before Covid-19 locked us down in March 2020 (can you believe it’s been five years?), Ranger Ed and I bought our forever home in Key West. I frequently check it out from the sidewalk, admiring its ground-floor convenience and perfect symmetry, surrounded by quiet, interesting neighbors. It’s tiny, but just the right size for us and the Cat 5s.

I’m a bit embarrassed by the ragtag strip of masking tape with our name on it. Especially since most everyone has lovely bronze door markers, some with fresh flowers. I should order ours, but I haven’t figured out what it should say. At the moment, the top contender is “If you can read this, sea level rise hasn’t drowned Key West — yet.” That ain’t gonna fit, but it’s a start.

I’m one of those plan-ahead-way-ahead kind of folks, so buying our spot in the Key West Cemetery isn’t a stretch. We know where we’re going to end up. Now we have to figure out how to get there. Before Covid, we had a pretty good plan. Live on the island as long as we can, move to the Shenandoah Valley for healthcare, return to the island in urns and settle into that cemetery cabinet.

The fifth anniversary of Covid and a passing conversation with a friend last Friday got me rethinking leaving the island. Healthcare looms large. No two ways about it, unless you have family, partners or super-loyal friends, there are limited ways to access healthcare gracefully, much less safely, in Key West. In normal times, and if one had the means to do so, relocating to the mainland was the only alternative.

Well, these aren’t normal times. Covid rammed us off what we then thought of as normal trajectories in 2020 and we’ve hurtled along uncharted paths since. I’m sure I’m not the only one whispering — or yelling — “I don’t recognize my country.” Kinda hard to make plans in such uncertainty, and that bugs my brain. A lot.

Hence my comment to my friend last Friday: “Since the world is heaving around us, I guess there’s no place better than Key West to ride it out.”

Aha. Full stop.

Isolation is rarely a good thing — except when it comes to war and pandemics. Key West knows that firsthand.

Key West Isolation | We learned a lot from Covid

Covid was devastating to our island.

We mourned the deaths of family and friends. Longtime residents left. Outsiders bought our homes, which they’re now trying somewhat unsuccessfully to sell, and turned them into empty shells or vacation rentals. Our lifelines to the mainland for groceries, gasoline, communications and supplies frayed or failed. Paychecks stopped as jobs disappeared. We weathered an onslaught of visitors when the Keys became prime sun-and-sand destinations for those escaping mainland weather and Covid restrictions.

For most of us, the Covid years were our first experience with absolute uncertainty, with an overturning of the things we thought we knew. We were, simply, derailed and we haven’t recovered.

But living on the island during the Covid years was far less onerous than living on the mainland. Our weather, our isolated location in the middle of big waters, our close-knit local community and our willingness to help each other made us less prone to the mainland’s nightmare headlines.

Same thing, actually, with the first American Civil War back in the 1860s. Life on an island 165 years ago would not have been for the faint of heart. Add in a bloody war and the challenges escalated. But Key West did what it always does, hunker down, make the best of things, wait it out and keep on keeping on. If one had to live through the Civil War, Key West was not at all a bad place to do so.

As I begin making my lists for the annual hurricane preparation, I’m thinking about our island’s history in Covid and in war. Maybe leaving, even for healthcare, doesn’t make sense anymore. Maybe instead of prepping for a month, I ought to prep for a year or two. I haven’t decided, mostly because my disbelief over our current state of affairs lulls me into thinking I can ignore the looming train wreck.

But I can’t silence this whisper: “Since the world is heaving around us, I guess there’s no place better than Key West to ride it out.”