It is just about a year now that life started to change and the shut downs were beginning, putting everyone in isolation, many of us alone. Our shut downs began March 12, 2020. I feel the need to communicate now and feel there is no one there. I began to think about my blog, still there, waiting for me to remember it and let my thoughts be gathered by it. So here we are, my blog and I.
I think to come back to something, something left behind, to begin again, one needs to just start, and throw herself right on the page, and write.
It has been a complicated year of not being able to be with family and friends, worrying about every step out the of the safety of my home. The contact I did have, waiting the two weeks, hoping I and they were OK, healthy. Where I use to go out to the store or library a few times a week, picking up books or groceries, fresh greens to cook, now changed and all came to a shocking halt!
One of my children who lived thirty minutes or so away called and said she wanted to come see me. I remember reminding her of Covid and the shut down, not for my safety alone, but she had compromising health issues that she needed to be concerned with. She was aware and was just as frustrated. She was just wishing she could come. That was July. That call seems so poignant now. I try to remember every word, every call over the year. But they, the calls stopped in July. But not unusual for her and I knew she would call when she could.
Then November arrived. Not at all sure what happened in the months since summer, as they were all a blur, each day floating in and out of each other. Nothing to grab onto for the sake of memory.
As the end of November approached, I felt the deep need to follow Advent. I hunted for short, fat purple candles and one pink. But was too late. They were all gone. I started reading A Christmas Carol, which was also being streamed this year, freely by Trinity Repertory Company, who presents it yearly. I was also following vlogs on You Tube of fiber artist I followed throughout the year. They were like connections as they in their various countries were also looked down. I was trying to make the best of a tiring, hard situation. Our governor ordered yet another pause. For my age group, my pause had never relaxed. Just more of the same.
All of this to say Advent began Sunday, November 29, 2020 and by Tuesday, December 1, 2020 everything halted. I need to remember these days and all I was feeling, mark them down, and honor them. I had no conscious idea what was about to begin that day, or end.
The following is a reflection I wrote on Christmas morning, as I quietly sipped coffee. Still numb and in shock and no where to turn with my feelings of disbelief and deeper still sadness.
December 25, 2020 Christmas Day
Sitting here on this rainy Christmas morning I decided to turn on my tree lights and put my Celtic Christmas CD in the Bose to play. I got Bitty out during a short break in the rain. As soon as we were back in, the heavens opened up, pouring rain, and I was grateful to be inside. I made coffee and I began to reflect on the last four weeks of Advent, on the last four weeks of my daughter Deanna’s life, how each Sunday of Advent heralded a week of a different emergency needing my consent to treat, then waiting word on each procedure result. The first week of Advent brought the news she was hospitalized and the needing my consent for procedures as she was unable to give her own consent. (I had been her emergency contact for thirty years) By the second week of Advent, still hospitalized, she was found bleeding, bleeding from her mouth, and more frantic phone calls from physicians telling me all she was up against, including the addition of covid, a possible death sentence for her and I knew it. They were needing emergency consents from me. A kind ICU doctor spoke to me daily gently explaining each days medical event and protocol. Each week that went by I found I was half here and half with her, in my mind. By the third week of Advent I was at Hope Hospice, giving yet another consent, but now for comfort only, for hospice care, this time in writing. And the waiting for an entirely different phone call had begun. By the Fourth Sunday of Advent my girl had been dead for five days and by today, Christmas, she is home, in the form of her ashes, in the sitting room. I realized I had been waiting all of Advent, holding my breath, waiting for phone calls, waiting for the hardest of words, trying to piece together all that she had been suffering with, that it all went very quickly from hope to sorrow during this period of Advent, this period of waiting. Also because of Covid, she suffered and died alone,without her mother to hold her, to comfort her. This haunts me. Deanna had battled many demons all of her life, right to the end; she now is no longer in the battle, but at peace, which I am really not sure what that means, if I am to be totally honest. But that is a whole other conversation…
