so long 2020

 

I remember the day that COVID hit home.  I don’t remember the date, exactly.  It was March 11 or March 12.  I was texting back and forth with my progeny about the Big Twelve postseason tournament and it was the day of the play-in games.  Our team was the number one team in the nation so they weren’t playing for another day or two, but it had just been announced that two of the major teams in the nation—one of which was ours—were not going to play in the post season.  We figured that our team was going to be the favorite in the NCAA tournament so that was a bummer.

 

So the subject of our texts changed from basketball to the announcement that the urban counties, for which we are ex-burbs, were planning to lock down.  I texted my son that we were lucky we were not going to be locked down and his reply was, no, we were going to be locked down, too.

 

It was the first inkling of a lifestyle change, the extent of which we were only vaguely aware.  Life changed that day and it has stayed changed for the rest of the year and it will stay changed until sometime in the new year.

 

However, I don’t think there will be a day next year that we will be able to say, today is the day; the virus is behind us.  I think it will be one of those gradual things like lost love or lost friends where we carry the grief until one day we smile or chuckle about something and we realize that life will go on.  We will get vaccinated at soon as we can but we will still wear masks and social distance and wash our hands.  Maybe someday we will meet someone and shake their hand, or maybe we will never shake hands again.

 

We will bid adieu to this plague, I hope, but it will not be gone on the fifth hour of the fifth day of the fifth month, at an exact moment that we can pinpoint.  It will hang around for a while.  I think that we can be certain when the clock strikes twelve tonight and this year ends, the virus will still be with us. 

 

We just hope that it goes away sometime soon.

 

Until then, our wish is a happy new year.

 

And in Jimbo’s world, we mean it.

ode on intimations of immortality

 

We got the last of our Christmas cards sent out today.

 

Big woop, you might say.  You also might add that you got yours out two weeks ago and then throw in something like, “took you long enough.”  Or, you may say something like, why didn’t you just instant message?  I realize the habit of sending out Christmas cards is becoming a lost art, and mainly we just send out Christmas cards to older people—mostly the people who send Christmas cards to us.  I seriously doubt if our progeny have ever sent out a Christmas card.

 

I will predict that sending Christmas cards will probably die with my generation, if it isn’t on life support already.  Once upon a time, sending cards, and just writing to communicate back and forth, was a way of keeping in touch, much like we instant message today, only much lower-tech and much slower.

 

We received a Christmas card today from a fellow co-worker who mentioned that another fellow co-worker had passed away a little over a year ago.  It is funny how people who were once a daily part of your life fade out of your life, then fade out of your memory and finally a reminder comes that all that is left of them is a memory.  I have seen too many people who were once important in my life fade away and then I hear they are gone forever.  And all that is left is some memory of a good time you had with them, or something silly they did at work.  I know that we will all become just a memory someday, but I wonder too, if our existence is really summed up by something done one great summer afternoon that someone remembers fondly or that day at work when someone broke the stress with some quick phrase. 

 

“Do you remember that project we were working sixty-hour weeks to complete when Jimbo cracked us all up?”

 

Someday, we will all fade from reality and afterward fade from memory.  Maybe, though, we will do something that sticks in someone’s mind.  I hope that thing is good and is remembered fondly and not something that is lamentable.

 

At least that is our wish here in Jimbo’s world.