Your March 11 Stories

It has been two years, somehow.

Two weeks ago, I asked you, on the heels of the two-year anniversary of the unofficial, not-entirely-accurate beginning of the pandemic in the United States, to send me your March 11 stories. For my personal newsletter, when the pandemic first hit, I had readers send me personal tales of what they were going through as they were going through it. As I went through these stories, sent now, two years later, I noticed how much more wistful, even hopeful, they were. Two years ago, we wondered if it were legitimately the end of the world. Now we know, at least in a personal sense, for some people, it really was. Every one of us is a little different now than we were two years ago. I thought these stories were good examples of that.

Here are your best stories. At the end, I’ll add in my favorite of those stories from two years ago … one that still gives me hope today.

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I work in fundraising for a Big East University. The second week of March is often the busiest week of the year as we hold lots of events, meet with lots of alumni and, of course, watch lots of basketball in New York. As the week approached, and the news got more dire, events and meetings were being canceled at a prodigious rate. I still had some meetings and the tournament was still on, so I made my…