We all worry about the people we love

At the beginning of last year I planned to travel to my hometown of Chongqing from Beijing, where I live and work, as often as possible.

That aim was one of my New Year's resolutions, because my mother had undergone surgery for lung cancer and my 93-year-old grandmother had been diagnosed with heart failure and was hospitalized for nearly two months.

I wanted to see the two women I love most in the world much more often.

However, I only saw them twice, in June and October, because of the COVID-19 epidemic.

On Jan 21-two days before Wuhan, Hubei province, announced a lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19-I decided to cancel my trip.

It was a very hard decision. I worried about my family. I wanted to go home to see how they had recovered.

Messages and video chats can lie. I worried about if they or I were hit by the novel coronavirus, but I could not be with them. I thought I would prefer to spend the rest of my days with them if the virus could not be controlled.

But on the other hand, I was worried about bringing the virus back home.

I also worried about my 8-month-old son boarding an airplane because he refused to wear a face mask back then.

Now, he is used to it, but I feel very sorry for a young generation that will have to get used to wearing face masks.

Although it sounded like being prepared for the worst-case scenario-death-I still hoped my loved ones would have a better chance to live. I am a hypocrite at the end.

Millions and millions of people from China and abroad shared the same concerns as me last year-worries about their loved ones, people they'd only ever seen on TV and even enemies.

COVID-19 has made people worry about all kinds of connections in the world.

Being an editor, I read about other peoples' worries on my computer screen, including a Wuhan doctor who ate her birthday cake alone while she worried about her husband and sons.

The cake, ordered by her husband, arrived along with the bad news that he, also a doctor, had been infected with the virus.

He said he had planned to celebrate her birthday in the hospital with her, but did not expect to be there as a patient being treated.

I thought that in addition to feeling fearful, he must have worried about his family while lying in the hospital.

I also read about a senior college student in Wuhan, who returned to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region for the winter vacation, but had to order a delivery service at the end of June to pack up his "college life" as he could not return to campus because of COVID-19.

Since many of his college friends were in Wuhan, he worried about their health when the city was an epidemic hot spot early last year.

Later he worried about how he might have few chances to see many of them because he had chosen to stay in Xinjiang and it is so far away.

He never thought he would not be able to say a proper farewell to his college life, dormmates, friends, girls he had crushes on and moreso, his youth in general.

I worried about my colleagues, since many of them were out there during the pandemic, taking the risk of being exposed to the virus while doing their jobs.

In August, I was back on the front line. My first trip was to Wuhan, the heroic city. I heard all the stories filled with concerns during the epidemic and afterwards.

People worry because they care, they love, they sympathize. That's how we show love and humanity.

Luo Wangshu