Nurse Holly Franklin: ‘It’s kind of apocalyptic’

Holly Franklin, 49, is a nurse who lives in Jefferson County. She has a son who requires a ventilator for day-to-day life, and said her family has been very careful during COVID-19. But she knows many people don’t believe the threat from the disease is real.

“I see it in the hospitals, there are so many people that say ‘oh it’s just the flu’. I see the death, I see the suffering. I see the people who can’t breathe and the scared faces. It’s just horrible, but other people don’t see that part.

I’ve been cutting my husband’s hair, I’ve been cutting my son’s hair. I felt like a dummy the other day. I hadn’t had a haircut in almost a year, and I called the hair dresser, and she was like ‘it’s safe, it’s safe.’ Well I sat in the parking lot, and I saw people were going in and out without masks. I called her and I said ‘I’m sorry, I will go ahead and pay you for your time, but I can’t go in there,’ and she came outside to cut my hair for me. It was pretty awesome.”

But she doesn’t think it’s ever going to be back to normal. “I think masks are always going to be in our future. I don’t feel it’s going to be eradicated, and people die from it. I did get the vaccine, and it would be great if everybody could get the vaccine, because I think it will help.”

How has the pandemic made her feel?

“There’s a lot of sadness, and it’s all negative. We’ve hit 500,000 (deaths). A lot of it could have been prevented. It’s just sadness.

We get food delivered and we have a big sign on the front of our house that says, ‘Masks are required on this property.’ We have cameras on the house, and when people deliver food, we talk to the camera and say, “Thank you, have a good day, can you please put it down?” and we put gloves on to pick the bags up. That’s just sad. It’s almost like an alternate universe that we’re living in, and it’s almost like, how could this be our United States? How could this be our world? It’s just so hard to believe what we’re going through. It’s kind of apocalyptic.

This is part of a series of stories by AL.com to reflect on the 1-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic reaching Alabama. Each day leading up to March 13 we will elevate the voices of those impacted.

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