Four months ago, Celeste and Greg Couture celebrated St. Patrick’s Day, cupcakes in hand, with a double-paned window providing both protection and separation.
On Thursday, they finally got their first face-to-face moment since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Celeste met up with husband Greg Couture outside the New Hampshire Veterans Home in Tilton, where he has lived mostly in quarantine for the past four months.
While there was no glass between them, the distancing rules remained – they couldn’t touch, they had to sit at opposing ends of a 6-foot-long picnic table, and every time either touched their face, a staff member jumped in to squirt sanitizer on their hands.
But after almost four months of not seeing each other face-to-face, 6-feet is as almost as good as touching.
The Veterans Home started hosting in-person visitations this week, a few weeks after Gov. Chris Sununu relaxed restrictions on long-term care facilities.
Katie Goodwin, a recreation therapist at the home, said the visitations booked up almost instantly. Just this week, she has seen families, neighbors, and even volunteers come to see the residents. The home has only four slots a day for visitations – each visit requires screening and staff to enforce social distancing rules.
The Coutures snagged a coveted slot at 10 a.m on Thursday.
The couple met at an ice cream shop in 1969, where Celeste was working as a waitress and Greg worked night shifts as a maintenance worker. She brought him coffee (which she admits spilling on him at least once) and he taught her how to clean the stove she used.
Greg said it was love at first sight but Celeste insisted he was seeing another woman when they first started dating.
More than 50 years later, Celeste lives alone, save for a cat who mostly keeps to himself. Greg moved to Mountain Ridge Center, a long-term care facility, about 5 years ago after he had several strokes that affected his ability to walk and speak. A spot for Greg opened up at the veterans home in February, just a week before an outbreak of COVID-19 hit Mountain Ridge and infected one of his best friends.
He has spent virtually his whole time at the veterans home in quarantine.
“We both know how hard it is being without company,” she said. “But we also know that it keeps them alive.”
Celeste said she’s used to living alone. After all, Greg was overseas with the Navy or out on repair jobs for a good chunk of their marriage. She admits she misses having Greg around to fix things in the house, though.
“I don’t know how to find repair people so I just YouTube a lot and learn how to fix things,” she said.
Greg rolled his eyes.
“You shouldn’t use a ladder,” he said.
At Mountain Ridge, Celeste used to visit Greg every day and take him home for Sunday dinners. Now, she’s had to get creative with her visits. Since early March, she has stood outside in sometimes freezing temperatures to get a look at Greg through the window. Greg looked down from his friend’s room, which had a better vantage point of the crosswalk.
On Sundays, she sometimes brings baked goods, like pumpkin whoopie pies, blueberry muffins, and on St. Patrick’s Day, those green cupcakes. Although technically visitors aren’t allowed to bring food to the residents, giving a couple of sweets to the security guards can ease the rules a bit.
While the Coutures are grateful for visitations, there are still differences they have to get used to. They don’t have privacy during their conversations because staff has to enforce safety precautions. They can’t touch each other either, which is particularly hard for the Coutures, who describe themselves as “hugging people.”
“I can’t even touch her, nevermind hug her,” Greg said.
Still, their conversations are remarkably normal for their first in-person meeting in months. They talk about who Celeste ran into at Home Depot, Greg’s brother’s recent weight loss, and her car, which she was taking to get fixed after the visitation.
A nurse interrupted Celeste mid-sentence to inform them that their 45 minutes were up. The tables were wiped down, hands were sanitized and just as they were about to part, Greg pulled down his mask and snuck a smile.