A12 MONDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2020
NAuria Abraham is usually a Thanks-
giving “nomad,” sometimes hosting
friends at the home she shares with her
husband and 12-year-old daughter in
Brooklyn, other times visiting family.
This year, more than ever, she yearned
to spend the holiday in Massachusetts,
where a close family member is recover-
ing from an illness. Although she wanted
to lend her love and support in person,
Ms. Abraham, 52, felt the risk of the co-
ronavirus would have been too high.
“The first week of November, we
started to see the numbers rising and I
began to have an inkling that maybe this
might all be ‘the best-laid plans,’ ” said
Ms. Abraham, the founder of Auria’s Ma-
laysian Kitchen, a manufacturer of sam-
bals and other Malaysian foods. “The
hardest part for me was for us to not be
there.”
Even her daughter, she said, picked up
on her sadness. “She knew that trying to
be together for a few days was so neces-
sary this year.”
It’s natural to take stock of the year-
that-was when the holidays roll around.
Through the lens of travel, 2020 for many
has been about — well, nothing and no-
where. Ms. Abraham and other would-
have-been-trip-takers are left grappling
with a specific loss, not only about places
not seen and experiences not had, but
also milestones not celebrated, people
not hugged and time that’s impossible to
get back. They are also questioning
whether they have any right to feel sad-
ness, given the widespread illness, death
and economic turmoil caused by the vi-
rus.
“Generally speaking, it’s not as chal-
lenging to lose some things compared to
others, but it is possible to grieve the loss
of our own future, our own health — any-
thing we consider valuable,” said M.
Katherine Shear, the founder and direc-
tor of the Center for Complicated Grief at
the Columbia School of Social Work.
Early this year, Judy Mallory, 71,
bought her grandson, Max, a yellow
Paddington Bear-inspired raincoat: the
perfect accessory for their planned Sep-
tember vacation to London and Belgium.
Along came the pandemic. The trip —
which would have been with Ms. Mallo-
ry’s son and daughter-in-law — unrav-
eled: no charming Airbnb in London’s
Notting Hill, no Eurostar to Brussels, no
watching Max, who will turn 2 in Febru-
ary, absorb his first international setting.
“I am seeing my ‘travel life’ pass me
by,” said Ms. Mallory, a retired elemen-
tary schoolteacher who lives in San
Diego. “I’m not saying I’m going to stop
traveling when I’m 80, but I do have to
worry about safety because of my age,
and this felt like a loss — not only the loss
of time, but the loss of time with my fam-
ily.”
‘We’re kind of running out of time’
Others have also struggled with accept-
ing a new, uncertain future. In January,
Susan Romanoff Baum found herself sit-
ting on the beach on Española Island, in
the Galápagos, newly retired from the
educational resources company she co-
founded in 1991.
With the majestic landscape spread
out before her — the cerulean waters of
Gardner Bay, the splashes of red from
the Sally Lightfoot crabs — the future
looked bright. “I knew that I wanted to be
a citizen of the world and travel, and
hopefully spread some good,” said Ms.
Baum, 73, who lives in Great River, N.Y.
In February and March, Ms. Baum
and her husband of 51 years were set for
their third Ethiopia tour with the educa-
tion nonprofit H2 Empower. There was
also a European vacation with friends
slated for September and October.
“We’re pretty energetic and fit people,”
Ms. Baum said. “But we’re kind of run-
ning out of time to do the things we really
wanted to do — we wanted to hit the
ground running.”
This spring, as her plans collapsed,
Ms. Baum tried to keep her sadness and
disappointment in check: Infection rates
in New York were peaking, hospitals
were filling. “How dare I think that my
travels were important?” she reminded
herself.
Then, a beloved uncle died and Ms.
Baum had to attend the funeral in Ohio
over Zoom.
“People forget that travel isn’t just
about the fun stuff,” she said. “It’s also
about being able to be places where you
can support one another and be around
the people you love.”‘It’s hard on your heart'
That is also true for happy occasions.
Emily Alvarez, 33, who lives in the Wood-
land Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles,
watched several trips fall prey to the
pandemic this year, including a swing
through Nice, France, to meet her best
friend’s two children for the first time,
and her brother and sister-in-law’s baby
shower in Orlando, Fla. Most of all,
though, Ms. Alvarez had been looking
forward to her Cuban-American family’s
annual Noche Buena, or Christmas Eve,
celebration in her hometown, Miami.“That’s when traditionally we roast a
big pig and we have black beans and rice
and everybody’s gathered and dancing,”
said Ms. Alvarez, the co-founder of 360
PMI, a website development company.
Ms. Alvarez said she is torn between
the feeling of sadness and the feeling that
she “dodged a bullet.” With an underly-
ing health condition, she didn’t want to
gamble.
“I’d been really hanging onto hope for
a long time,” Ms. Alvarez said. “It be-
came real when I finally told my mom,
‘Hey, I’m not going to purchase airline
tickets.’ ”
Janae Melvin, 40, of Kansas City, Kan.,
also contended with conflicting emotions
this year while watching her family’s two
vacations fall through.
After qualifying — and fund-raising —
for the prestigious American Youth
Baseball Hall of Fame Invitational Tour-
nament, Ms. Melvin’s son’s youth base-
ball team was bound for Cooperstown,
N.Y., in June. And Ms. Melvin’s 9-year-
old daughter’s dance company had been
selected for Dance The World Broadway,
a whirlwind of theater-focused events
and workshops that would have also
brought the family to New York City for
the first time.
“People didn’t get to go to their high
school graduations,” said Ms. Melvin, a
special events coordinator for Perfect
Game Midwest, which organizes and
promotes youth baseball and fast-pitch
tournaments. “People weren’t able to see
family. And here I was, worried about a
baseball game.”
That sort of reasoning is a common
coping mechanism, said Dr. Shear, the
grief expert.“Whenever we’re dealing with painful
emotions, it’s natural to wonder whether
we can do anything about it,” Dr. Shear
said. “And if we can’t, we usually want to
do something to help manage the pain.
One way is by reminding ourselves that
it could have been a lot worse.”
Although Ms. Melvin knows she’ll
eventually see the Statue of Liberty, the
baseball trip is another matter: Her son
will turn 13 in mid-December, and the in-
vitational is limited to 12-year-olds.
“As a parent, it’s hard on your heart,”
Ms. Melvin said. “You just don’t want
your babies to lose things they’ve
worked so hard for.”‘We have to be able to find joy’
Earlier this year, Doreen Agboh front-
loaded her courses so she could spend
“senior spring” — the last semester of
medical school, before residency begins
— traveling to Colombia, Costa Rica and
elsewhere.
“In general, as a doctor, you’re never
going to have four months of time off un-
less you build it into your life — but then
that means no salary,” said Dr. Agboh, 28,
now an emergency-medicine resident
physician in Chicago. “There will never
be this time again where I have the free-
dom and the ability to do what I want
whenever I want. And, for me, that
‘wanting’ was travel.”
Instead, Dr. Agboh spent much of her
senior spring grounded in New Jersey,
first in her medical-school apartment in
Newark, and then in her hometown,
Westampton, N.J.
“I was grieving a lot,” she said. “I was
very sad and anxious — the things that I
had guaranteed myself were no longerthere.”
When she finishes her residency in
three years, Dr. Agboh may pursue a fel-
lowship or start a new job. She could also
be married with children. For now, she is
focused on working hard and getting to
know her new city.
“I’ve accepted that life may never be
the same, but that doesn’t mean that you
shouldn’t do things that make you happy
— we have to be able to find joy,” she said.
The Baums adopted a similar mind-
set, reacquainting themselves with their
hamlet by bird-watching and soaking in
sunrises at the local marina.
“I think there are a lot of facets to los-
ing travel,” Ms. Baum said. “We’ve had to
rethink how we’re going to do things, but
it doesn’t mean you have to stop learn-
ing.”
Ms. Alvarez is wrestling with the fact
that she won’t be able to attend her cous-
in’s wedding in January. But she ac-
knowledged that her connection to her
family has remained strong, despite the
distance: “I don’t need to go home for
Christmas to realize that our relation-
ship is special,” she said.
Ms. Mallory, for her part, is eager to
get to London with her grandson.
“I’m really hoping the opportunity
comes around,” she said. “Max can have
another raincoat if we go — it will proba-
bly just have to be a bigger size.”
And although Ms. Abraham, who was-
n’t able to make it to Massachusetts for
Thanksgiving, also had a family Christ-
mas trip to Malaysia crumble, she still
considers herself lucky.
“Every day we say our thank-yous for
what we have, and who we have, in our
lives — I’m knocking on wood,” she said.Lamenting the Lost Opportunities of a Year Without Travel
Emily Alvarez missed a family baby shower and a trip to France this year, and she recently abandoned plans for a Christmas visit to Miami to see her relatives.BETH COLLER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAuria Abraham, left, of Brooklyn, dropped plans to visit a family member in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving, and Susan Romanoff Baum, right, of Great River, N.Y., had to attend a beloved
uncle’s funeral in Ohio on Zoom. “People forget that travel isn’t just about the fun stuff,” Ms. Baum said. Many people who had to cancel trips feel disappointment compounded with guilt.
FLO NGALA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES ADAM MACCHIA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESDream Vacations Fizzle
And Traditions Fade
By SARAH FIRSHEIN