There really is no direction to this piece, no purpose or intent, at least not at the beginning. I am not writing to try to be witty, clever or seem intelligent. I just sit here, December 17, 2020, with a few minutes before a zoom meeting and I had a desire to empty my brain of thought, in a manner that the thoughts climb in, I am trying to shoo them out…

The year was interesting, if I tried to explain it to someone that had passed away years ago, they would think that I went off the deep end. I was thinking, imagining if you will, that I was talking with my mom and dad and they asked me how the year has been like they used to ask me how my day was. Dad left us in 2012 and mom in 2016, so of course they would not understand nor do I think they could even imagine what I was sharing. I would not know even where to start.

“Well, work has been interesting, no or little income now for over 8 months. Why? Well Covid had a lot to do with it. Covid? Oh, you do not know what Covid is? We had a pandemic, yep you heard me right, a pandemic. China, it started in China. We all wear masks now, that’s right, masks.”

Can’t you just imagine THAT conversation and where it would lead! LOL

February was a trying month. My middle sister had fallen in January and had been in the hospital for a long time. She had broken, and virtually destroyed, her left leg. They tried with all their will to save it, but on Valentine’s Day of 2020, it was amputated. Friday February 14, she endured hours of surgery while doctors took her leg above the knee. As I sat in her room she shared with me pictures that our niece had sent her of my oldest sister, her mother. When I saw the pictures, I immediately called my nephew.

My oldest sister had been fighting cancer for over a year, I had seen her at my daughter’s wedding the previous September and she seemed to be on the road to recovery. She had a setback in January that she described as minor, and we spoke often and her spirits were high. When I saw the photos I was devastated and knew the end was near. I called my nephew and told him to get on the road and go see his mom. He arranged his world to get there and arrived on February 18, an hour or so after he got there, she passed.

I had been driving to class that Tuesday, session 6 of the Dale Carnegie Course in Valdosta, GA., my phone rang and it was my nephew telling me she was gone. It was just before 5 and I was on the exit ramp getting ready to turn left and go to class, she is gone. Had a great session, nobody knew, until the end of the night. The next week we have an inspirational talk to give and the class asked me for an example, at that moment the most inspirational person I knew was my sister and her courage, so I shared it.

The rest of the year would be dominated by words like Covid, pandemic, recession, elections, impeachment, shutdown and such.

Typical of what this year is, I received a call in the middle of this writing time, which took me away for a bit and now I have to go to the zoom call, so finishing this up might take another day or two. That in a nutshell is the year 2020… Be back in a bit, or maybe I won’t.

Bob