The COVID-19 pandemic has affected us all.

We’re afraid to hug, to touch, to act toward each other with affection of any kind. It has split us up into single family units that not even the holidays can bring back together.

For many high school students, this pandemic is an interruption.

Sports are cancelled, school is now online, and the whole world seems like it has stopped.

For the seniors of 2020, I’m sorry.

Our whole senior year has been crazy. From the loss of Mrs. Leann Wartella during the summer to the loss Mr. Edward Councilor before Thanksgiving, we have already endured much more than past seniors have.

As we started the last months of senior year, finally reaching the home-stretch, COVID-19 came to take it away.

The world is crazy right now and many of us are enduring and mourning many other things than the loss of our senior year.

Just because so many things are going on, it doesn’t mean that the loss of our senior year is any less important.

I know and I hold hope in the fact that Kearsley is doing everything they can to give us important memories that many other seniors from other schools may lose out on.

But it’s OK to mourn the things that we have lost.

It’s OK to be sad about not having the “last day” of high school that we expected.

It’s OK to wish you had that last game.

It’s OK to be upset over the loss of the senior prom we imagined.

It’s OK to be upset about the elementary and AMS hall walks.

It’s OK to wish we had the Senior Choice Awards.

It’s OK to feel sad over Class Day.

It’s OK to wish we could have had our “senior sunset.”

Most importantly, it’s OK to still hold hope that we will get to experience some of those things.