2020: Life Is Struggle
How best to describe the year 2020? It has been a trying time for people everywhere, but a good time to “count my blessings” and be thankful it wasn’t worse. Better to avoid self-pity and accept the sad times as best I can. Those sad times include my father-in-law, Jim Kamos, dying in early September, then my brother, Ralph, the next month and a 45 year old nephew, Dennis Orange, in November.
Then, when we returned home from my nephew’s funeral in Indiana, we learned one of Christie’s aunts, Myra Moore, had passed alone in a nursing home. Alone because COVID-19 restrictions forbade visitors. Terrible for many reasons, especially so when you realize that her aunt’s son-in-law had a fatal heart attack just a couple weeks earlier AND her aunt’s grandson had been struck and killed by a car driven by someone fleeing police in a high speed chase. Heartbreaking even for the most resilient person when supported by family. Impossible to underestimate how devastating it feels for a person cut off from all loved ones.
COVID-19: Back in March when the outbreak started raging, most people would never have believed it possible to shut down the world’s economy. But, it happened. Who would have expected the President to order people to “shelter in place” and bring air travel to a halt? Or, to wear masks, stay 6’ from others, close schools and churches, plus all the other sweeping changes that were mandated?
Add a contentious presidential election into the mix with a degree of divisiveness not seen since the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Fold in heightened racial tensions due to the deaths of several African-Americans during incidents with police officers. Fan the flames with protests about systemic racism and calls for social justice that turn into riots in several large cities. Follow all of that with counter protests in those same cities and everything seemed to spiral out of control.
With 2020 in the past, we began the new year by planning a 2-week trip this summer to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks. Two places I’ve always wanted to go and two of the four remaining U.S. states I haven’t visited. A good start to hopefully a better year.
Whatever comes my way in the future, a look back is something I have a tendency to do, and often. All these family losses were mourned last year but Ralph, Dennis, Jim and Myra will be missed just as much in 2021. Bittersweet memories abound.
Richard Beattie
January 2, 2021
Greenwood, Mississippi
Ralph Beattie
1944 - 2020
Dennis Orange
1974 - 2020
Myra Moore Jim Kamos
1940 - 2020 1930 - 2020
