Gary, our friend Mark Foehringer’s husband, was the only other non-dancer in the terpsichorean crowd my husband Brian hung out with. Around my age, with gold frame glasses and a receding hairline, Gary was relentlessly enthusiastic. For twenty-three years, while Brian and Mark choreographed and drank martinis, Gary rented a theater, arranged for costumes to be embroidered and hired artistes.

Dancers ignore non-dancers except when the nons are asked, “What do you think of my dancing?” So, at the Ornament Party, after they finished striking the set of the “Nutcracker,” while the performers huddled in the kitchen, smoked, drank absinthe and complained about lighting, Gary grabbed a cup of mulled wine and stood next to me at the piano as we warbled through, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Gary and Mark went to visit family in Ohio in March 2020. Gary died in his sleep, and as far as I know the cause of death was never diagnosed.

I blame a lot of things on COVID, and not just our friends who have died. I blame it for the feeling that Aidan never graduated elementary school. One day, school was cancelled with no closure, and three years and endless Zoom meetings later, he is a junior in Compass High School. I blame COVID for the closing of Le P’tit Laurent, our favorite restaurant. For those 15 pounds I gained. Before the pandemic, I was middle-aged. Now I am … old.

COVID also ended Brian’s dance career. In February 2020, he celebrated his 40th year as a professional dancer. The next month there was nowhere to teach, nowhere to perform, and by the time it was all over, he no longer had a toe to point.

On April 10, President Biden signed into law a bipartisan resolution to end the emergency response to the Coronavirus outbreak.

Don’t get me wrong, but there are things I’m going to miss about the pandemic. Not the death, of course. But I will miss the masks. I skipped shaving for and no one noticed. Remember the early part where we wore cloth masks? Me, I alternated between masks featuring the Justice League and Captain America. They were all whimsy, not fashion. I did not see one Louis Vuitton mask during the past three years.

I also miss the open road. In April of 2020, I still had to go to work, and on my 5:32 a.m. drive up 101, I had the highway to myself, like Charlton Heston in “The Omega Man.” I miss that year we didn’t have to worry about our sports teams because they weren’t playing. So, we went for months without seeing the Giants or the Warriors or even the Niners lose.

I miss the coziness of the four of us not being able to go out into the world, and me working crazy hours, so Brian taught himself how to cook Five Spice Chicken.

We were all in this together. When I went into San Francisco General SFGH or Laguna Honda, a nurse would say, “Thank you for your service,” and I would reply, “Thank you for your service.” I miss standing on line outside the Diamond Heights Safeway, six feet apart from the other customers, the four Fisher-Paulsons bubbled together because it was the only time we got out of the Blue Bungalow in the Outer, Outer, Outer, Outer Excelsior.

There was not the expected baby boom, but there was the puppy boom. Just about everyone I knew got a dog. The Sasbs got Jack, and Terry Asten Bennett got Cha Cha the Rottweiler. Queenie and Moxie adopted the Fisher-Paulsons.

Zane got COVID that first November. Zane never had more than a headache but still, no one could come over for Thanksgiving dinner. And though I do love our dinners for 18, I had the thrill of my first on-line grocery order. And even though Instacart substituted carrots for parsnips, and Gravensteins for Pink Ladies (who bakes apple pie with Gravensteins?), and delivered the teeniest turkey imaginable, still and all, sitting there with just the four of us around that dining room table, we were grateful to have each other in the calamity.

The crisis is over. Thank God. I won’t miss the dying, but death has a way of right-sizing us. Whereas Gary could be a little bit of a nerd in life, we see him now as a charming and generous ghost. We who live must carry the optimism that the Garys of the world left behind.

(The Gary Lindsay Dance Scholarship was established to remember him. Those wishing to contribute, please go to mfdpsf.org)