This is the first Christmas without mom. And, although she hadn’t had a good year last year, she was still able to smile when we took our Christmas photo with her.
What’s worse – is Vince and I are recovering from nasty cases of COVID-19. We’ve spent the past couple weeks struggling to breathe without coughing and sleeping more hours than we were awake.
Vince lost his senses of taste and smell. Which was actually a good thing for me – because I wasn’t really interested in showering – or able to, for that matter. Who knew standing took such effort?
Walking the dog was a lesson in perseverance as neither of us had the energy, but, well, dogs don’t much care that you’re fighting a virus. They still need to walk and sniff and piddle and poo.
Christmas 2019 with mom
But we have some amazing neighbors who took special care of us – from a
distance, of course. When we were at our worst, they dropped off soups and fresh
fruit. Another neighbor picked up a pizza one Sunday night for themselves – and
dropped off a second pizza at our front door for us.
One neighbor made a special trip to drop off a bottle of zinc supplements after we’d run out and then another neighbor brought us a much-needed bottle of Nyquil cough syrup to help us sleep at night.
And just yesterday a neighbor dropped off some Christmas cookies; something we hadn’t even thought about baking this year.
We have some pretty incredible neighbors, don't we?
Ever since I became a part of Vince’s family, we’ve spent every Christmas Eve together. We have lots of food and drink and – before her unexpected death last year, his stepmother Marilyn and her daughter Michele bought and wrapped a mountain of gifts for us all. It was a pretty amazing sight to see.
This year, however, the family decided to postpone our Christmas gathering since Vince and I had been sick. Nobody wanted us to share the virus.
I get it. I wouldn’t want to share this virus with anyone – let alone people we care about. So we'll wait to get together with family until the New Year.
We had written our Christmas letter right after Thanksgiving this year – and mailed it well before we got sick. This is evidenced by the line I wrote, “Well, for one thing, our household is currently healthy and happy. And that is a huge thing for which to be grateful.”
Truer words.
Sadly, we learned that one of our relatives was telling others not to open our card or read our letter as they were concerned they’d catch COVID by doing so.
I’d like to think that we’d be more caring about our family and friends not to let anyone open something that even had the remote possibility of containing the virus.
But we just kept on rolling with the punches.
I had barely shopped for Christmas – so I only had a couple gifts for Vince. And I didn’t bother wrapping them. I just brought them downstairs and handed them to him. So prepared, right?
It was interesting – I haven’t had much of an appetite since the start of our illness – and Vince can’t taste or smell. But we shared a delicious beef roast, fingerling potatoes, corn and salads.
I even poured us glasses of wine, but couldn’t manage to finish even one glass.
Oh well. We gave it a shot!
What I realized as the day went on was that it didn’t matter that we didn’t have mounds of gifts under the tree. It didn’t matter that we weren’t surrounded by lots of other people.
What really matters is that we are returning to good health – something so many have been denied.
What really matters is that I have a husband who loves me unconditionally. Who loves me enough to allow me a melancholy moment, but also asks me to recall some of my favorite childhood Christmas memories. And that made me smile.
So despite the sad start to my Christmas 2020, it has a happy ending. And carries with it a feeling of hope for the future.
And my wish is for all you to have a healthy and happy New Year.
Let’s put this one behind us, shall we?
