Pandemic!

 I don't know if you've noticed this, but we are in a pandemic. First one (and hopefully the last) in my life. 

For the most part, I've not minded staying home. I do that most the time anyway. I miss church. I miss lunch with friends whenever we fancy. I miss the freedom of  knowing I can go even if I don't want to, just having it be a possibility is often enough. 

Our gap in our safety is Daughter, who still has to go to work every day. She wears a mask, but her peers do not (even though one just lost a family member to this virus). She is protected from customers pretty well by plexiglass and lots of bleach cleaning and hand washing. She takes off her shoes before entering the house, goes straight up stairs and washes and changes clothes. So she does the best she can. 

But when the cats begin to look at  you like they wish you'd leave, it's time to get out of the house. So, Husband went to the grocery store, geared up in his hazmat suit and I visited my 91 year old mother who I don't touch or get really close to.

Yay.

We did venture out last week and got our first vaccine. Our second comes in a month. I'm now hearing how the side effects are worse with the second one, so I'm really excited.

I've been stunned more than once over deaths to this virus and I guess I will be again. 

On another topic, I'm waiting for at least one big snow this winter. We've had a few baby snows, and one of them gave me joy because I got to watch it snow all day long. 

Tomorrow marks our 36th wedding anniversary. I pray we get to see many more. We've had some great snows on past anniversaries.

Here's to you, my fellow inmates. May we be freed soon. 

You Just Never Know

I had already written a blog in my head - I just had a few more things to do in the house to catch up so I could sit down and type it out. I thought it was well done, witty and something you could relate to without too much effort.

My last chore was a phone call to check on a friend who had been ill. I hadn't heard from her in four or five days, and when I checked my last message to her, she had not responded. This wasn't unusual for her, so I didn't really worry. I had meant to call  her brother the day before, but I was having a "bad pain day" myself, so I put it off.

After a moments hesitation he responded to my question about how she was doing. 

She had passed away earlier that morning.

I was truly stunned. I knew she was sick. I knew she was very, very sick because she was 82 years old and had COVID. But for some reason I had no idea she would die. She was healthy otherwise, and in my mind she would pull through and have something to talk about the next time she called.

We had known each other since I was in my twenties. Over forty years. She was the psychiatrist who came from Atlanta weekly to do a clinic where I worked as a counselor. Somehow we hit it off, and no matter where she lived - Atlanta, Kentucky, New Mexico, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and finally back to her hometown, Birmingham, Alabama - we never lost touch. 

I sang at her son's christening. I sang at her wedding. Accompanied by a harp, no less.

She visited fairly often, spending a couple of nights before going on, but this stopped a few years ago as she felt she was getting too old to drive great distances alone.

She loved my books. Every time she wanted to buy a gift for friends, she would send them one or eight of my books. I'm afraid she may have forced them on folks sometimes. She was insistent that I was the next big author. 

We called each other several times a year, always on our birthdays. Her birthday was the same day as my grandmother's and we seemed to always mention that.

Next month, on my birthday, I won't get to hear her raucous off key rendition of happy birthday.

Well, this blog was obviously more for me than it was for  you. But I would venture to say that every one of you who reads this has been touched by this hateful pandemic. You have lost someone to it, or have been fearful until they recovered. And if you haven't been touched by it, thank God right now.

You just never know, you know?