By PAUL CUNO-BOOTH 

The Keene Sentinel

In normal times, Debi Brunt’s son Tyler goes to school in Vermont. He and his mom visit Walmart and Burger King, both of which he loves. He meets regularly with a behavioral analyst.

Then news of the novel coronavirus hit closer and closer to home, until Brunt decided it was no longer safe to go out.

Tyler, 18, has autism and health problems that make him especially vulnerable to illness, Brunt said. “I am literally worried that if he catches this, he’s not gonna survive it.”

For about two weeks, she has kept him home in Keene, and has hardly left herself, for fear of picking up the virus somewhere and bringing it back. Brunt’s sister, who lives in Hillsboro, drops off groceries, she said.

The restrictions have turned Tyler’s world upside down.

At Walmart, “his favorite place in the world,” he loves to browse the store’s baby stuff — he bonded with a baby cousin when younger — and shop for groceries. He also likes going out to eat.

“My life, I could be OK, and I could handle the changes, but he doesn’t understand,” Brunt said. “He doesn’t understand why we can’t get in the car and go to Walmart.”

Brunt is doing what she can to get her son through each day. She’s always wanted to travel around the country with him; for now, they’re taking “virtual tours,” watching videos on an iPad. If their lockdown drags on, Brunt said, she may start taking Tyler for drives, without them ever getting out of the car.

“It’s like I’m holding in this breath,” she said, “waiting for this thing to peak and to start going away, so that life can return to normal.”

In just a few short weeks, the coronavirus pandemic has altered daily life for many across the Monadnock Region. Stores have darkened. Restaurants have emptied. Events and activities have been canceled. Schooling, government meetings, church services and many workplaces have moved online. Hand sanitizer seems to be everywhere, except on grocery store shelves.

Even before Gov. Chris Sununu ordered Granite Staters to mostly stay at home starting this weekend, many local residents were doing so already so —as a protective measure, because their workplace had gone remote or because they no longer had jobs to go to.

Tiffany Rogers of Swanzey said she was laid off from her job at an auto dealership more than a week ago, though expects to be rehired after the crisis passes. In the meantime, she thinks unemployment benefits can tide her over.

“I think the isolation piece of it is the hardest, honestly,” she said Tuesday. “I live alone, so I’m just home alone, every day, going on six days now.” She had been passing the time with “cooking, cleaning, a lot of Netflix.”

The isolation has also weighed on Sarah Caito of Keene, the mother of a 7-month-old. The groups for new moms that she was attending a couple times a week are on hold.

“It’s just a time for moms to get out of the house and have adult interaction, basically,” she said. “… Otherwise, I’m stuck at home with an infant who doesn’t speak.”

Others have continued to venture out, often for essential jobs. Speaking last weekend, state Sen. Jay Kahn, D-Keene, expressed gratitude for those workers.

“Certainly those are emergency responders, but they’re also people at the grocery stores, at trash disposals ... the service stations and health care providers,” Kahn said. “We all need to be very careful with our interactions with each other, but we’re also dependent on each other.”

Kahn himself was avoiding all but the most essential errands.

The restrictions inconvenienced some and placed greater burdens on others.

The yoga studio in Keene where Deborah Buffum teaches has stopped offering in-person classes, though allows people to register for virtual sessions.

She has continued going to her job at The Works Café in Keene, though the pace has slowed, fewer people work there and, like all restaurants, it’s limited to takeout.

“I’m happy to still be there,” Buffum said Thursday, “because I feel like if restaurants were to get shut down, that would put so much more of a burden on the grocery stores, which are already hurting with supplies.”

In Winchester, Lisa Welch said her family had struggled to buy groceries, as shoppers cleared shelves of staples like bread, pasta, soup and rice. It’s especially difficult for her, due to her diabetes and lactose intolerance.

“A lot of people just go in and, honestly, hoard,” she said Tuesday. “And it’s hard for people like myself who are on a special diet. Because whether they need that food or not, they take it.”

She and her family had been going out near-daily, often spending hours driving from store to store, sometimes as far as Walpole or Peterborough.

“It’s just a hope and a prayer every day that we go out that we may find something,” she said.

Angela Johnson’s home in Jaffrey has become something of a one-room schoolhouse. An English teacher in the Mascenic Regional School District, she is online all day with her 75 5th-graders, while her own kids in the 2nd, 8th and 12th grades work nearby.

Her oldest son had been looking forward to prom, graduation and spending his last months of high school with friends. “He feels like his whole senior year has been canceled,” she said.

Meanwhile, her 2nd-grade daughter can’t go out for playdates. And a pool party last weekend to celebrate her 8th birthday was canceled. Instead, friends sent her birthday cards over Facebook and recorded themselves saying, “Happy birthday.”

“She’s too young to really understand the scope of it all,” Johnson said. “… Right now, she’s talking through video chat to our neighbor, who we can look out the window and see.”

Some have seen an uptick of generosity amid the bad news. “When things like this happen, you actually get to see the best in people,” said Luca Paris, a co-owner of Luca’s Mediterranean Cafe in downtown Keene.

Since the state prohibited on-site dining almost two weeks ago, Paris said customers have gone out of their way to support his restaurant. One donor gave him $500 to use “however you want to feed people,” Paris said. (He gave meals to laid-off restaurant workers in the area.) Another person bought meals for the Cedarcrest Center for Children with Disabilities.

“Keene’s always been like that,” he said. “I don’t think we needed this to show that.”

Across Central Square at the Keene Fine Craft Gallery, owner Taryn Fisher had shut her doors to customers and transitioned to “sort of a QVC model” — using videos on social media to show off items like jewelry, salad bowls and shawls. She hoped the online sales could get her through the coming months.

Her uncertainty grew Thursday, after the governor announced he was ordering nonessential businesses to cease in-person activities and close their physical spaces. As of Friday morning, Fisher was still wondering if she could continue to work out of her store, where she has no employees and had already cut off all face-to-face interactions with the public.

She said she recognizes how important it is, as a health measure, for people to stay home and distance themselves from others. But she struggled with the thought of spending the next five weeks at home in Keene, where she lives alone. Going to the empty store every day has provided some structure.

“I have made the decision to go to the gallery every day, turn on lights, turn on the music,” she said Monday, days before the order. “… I polish the glass. I set up shop like normal, because I really need a sense of normalcy.

“At the same time,” she added, “it’s just so quiet.”

Paul Cuno-Booth can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1409, or pbooth@keenesentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @PCunoBoothKS

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.