‘A dream come true’: Fully-vaccinated grandparents prepare to visit family for first time in a year

CLEVELAND, Ohio — After a year of isolation, the COVID-19 vaccine and new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are allowing families to do something so simple and once taken for granted — spend time together in person.

As of Monday, people who have been fully vaccinated for two weeks can visit with other fully-vaccinated individuals as well as unvaccinated people from a household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 indoors without masks or social distancing, according to the CDC.

Avon Lake’s Michael Stanek and his wife, Carol, have anxiously awaited the opportunity to hold their eighth grandchild, Win, who was born in October. With the new guidance, they’ll finally be able to do that soon.

“When we found out that we were going to be able to get the vaccine, we both had big smiles on our faces. We knew that the end was in sight where we would be able to actually hold him,” Michael Stanek said. “We’ve been able to see him and love him through the window but have not had the opportunity to touch him, cuddle him, anything.”

Pamela Wollenberg of Avon Lake also welcomed a grandchild in October. Since her son and daughter-in-law live in St. Charles, Mo., they’ve kept in touch on FaceTime, but the pandemic and travel restrictions have put meeting in person on hold.

Wollenberg, who hopes to visit soon, has kept busy with hobbies to help with the isolation. “I’ve been painting things that the baby might like. You have to keep busy otherwise you can feel sorry for yourself. But what good does that do? You have to move forward,” Wollenberg said.

David Bass, senior vice president at Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging, believes that although age groups, health conditions, living situations and backgrounds make the pandemic’s impact different for everyone, isolation, fear and disruption in relationships have caused the biggest hardships on older populations. He describes the development of vaccines as a game changer.

“It’s been an amazing, amazing impact. It means being able to have that kind of face-to-face contact,” Bass said. “A lot of people have done a good job at transitioning to being able to maintain relationships electronically in one way or another but it’s not a substitute for the face to face. The vaccines mean the world to people who haven’t been able to see kids and grandkids.”

Bass doesn’t expect to see an overnight change in the number of visits and anticipates fear to diminish gradually as more people get vaccinated and more info is discovered about how long the vaccines provide protection and how they react to virus variants.

“I think that people will be cautious. Appropriately cautious. But the lifting of the real restricted guidelines is certainly going to help, especially for the very primary family relationships that have had to be put at a distance,” Bass said.

Judy Friedman of Westlake is counting down the days until the arrival of her fifth grandchild in April.

“From the time that (my daughter) has been pregnant it’s been weighing really heavily on me that this is going to be so different and so hard not to be able to hug the new baby and hold the new baby,” Friedman said.

Friedman describes her pandemic experience as surreal. A year ago, she and her husband, both retired, were regularly babysitting and spending time with their grandchildren, who have struggled with the distance as well.

“It has been difficult not being able to hug your children and grandchildren. It’s been a really rough time,” Friedman said.

Friedman and her husband, who are both fully vaccinated, plan to visit their grandchild at home.

“It’s a dream come true,” Friedman said. “When this first started happening there was so much uncertainty. What means the most in my life is family and being able to be with each other and share those precious moments with the kids and share in all the joy that will happen as well.”

Said Dr. Robert Salata, chair of the department of medicine at University Hospitals, “As we get more of the population vaccinated, let’s say by the summer and early fall, we’re going to see opening up of these restrictions even more than we have now. But this is better than it has been for the last year or so.”

Salata believes the CDC has taken steps to liberalize guidelines because of increasing vaccination numbers, decreasing cases nationally, the development of new generation vaccines and studies looking into the vaccines’ responses to variants and additional booster doses being planned.

As someone who has helped administer vaccine doses at UH, Salata has had the opportunity to see the impact first hand. While vaccinating the 80-and-up age group, one patient told Salata he expected a new side effect.

“I said ‘What is that, sir?’ He said ‘Happiness.’ That was amazing and I was just so privileged to be involved in vaccinating these older folks. … That melted my heart. And that’s one of the things that makes it all worthwhile,” Salata said.

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