Thanksgiving in 2019 ended badly, with a phone call that my mother, suffering from frontotemporal degeneration primary progressive aphasia, nonfluent/agrammatic variant (FTD-nvfPPA), had aspirated part of her (hopefully-)pureed Thanksgiving dinner at her skilled nursing center and had been hospitalized. We drove in the dark to Austin, and luckily all my siblings and I got to say goodbye to her before she died two days later.
2020 has certainly been quite the year. It started well, with some day trips to Hico in January for lunch and sightseeing, and a jaunt to Austin on February 1 for my first-cousin-twice-removed Everly's first birthday party. The baby's grandfather, my cousin Tom, then a pilot with many overseas flights, talked about precautions he was taking against the novel coronavirus. He mentioned that it was difficult to find N-95 masks, having to drive 50 or so miles to get them. My youngest brother and sister, Brian and Mary, were also at that party, and that was the last time I've seen them (as well as Everly and Tom and Tom's wife Karen and daughter Katie and son-in-law Jimmy).
My other brother Mark remarried on March 1, and we were supposed to celebrate his marriage to Nazli later that month with my siblings and nieces and nephews. But then the lockdown hit. I also had to reschedule a planned celebration of life for my parents twice (and will almost certainly need to reschedule it at least once more).
Although I didn't get to travel as I'd hoped this year, I am so thankful I am retired and did not have to deal with coronavirus situations at work. I am thankful that if my husband was going to need various procedures, surgeries, and hospitalizations, they happened this year when we couldn't go anywhere else anyway (and that the hospitalizations were during early June and late September, when COVID was NOT peaking).
I'm thankful for the radiologist back in mid-April who spotted a suspicious "shadow area" on my spouse's bladder. It turned out to be cancer, but he caught it early enough. I'm thankful for the interventional radiologist who persevered and made a second attempt to insert a drainage tube in my husband's abscess in early June. That likely avoided emergency surgery and shortened the time at home with antibiotics via PICC grenades that I learned how to change. I'm thankful for ALL the great doctors and nurses and therapists and hospital staff that have helped him this year. And I am grateful that my sweetheart has recovered from all of this and is feeling MUCH better.
I am thankful for all the teachers and medical professionals and other essential workers, especially those in my family, and particularly those who have to put up with the stupidity of people who won't wear masks and avoid crowds. I am SO thankful the smart people in this country rallied and voted in a new president who will not be a super callous fragile racist sexist Nazi POTUS (nor a science-denying liar).
I'm thankful for technology like Zoom, which allowed me to attend various genealogy meetings, my 45th high school reunion, virtual tours of historic homes in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago (where Dad grew up) and in Houston (where Mom grew up), and THREE book clubs, including my old group in the Seattle area. We started meeting in 2001, when our kids - now in their early 30s - started high school! I talk to my 90-year-old aunt at least once a week on Google Duo.
I can't sew masks, but I am thankful I could use my librarian skills to work on an international project to index medical device service manuals to make them freely available to biotechs during the spring surge of the pandemic. I'm also thankful for all the free time that let me work on some crowd-sourced Lithuanian genealogy projects on Geni (via a Facebook group I co-administer). I'm grateful for good weather that's allowed lots of biking and walking outdoors to keep me sane.
I have to say that I am thankful my mother passed away when she did, both because the quality of her life had greatly diminished due to FTD-nvfPPA, and because I would be worried sick not being able to see her most of this year in her skilled nursing center (wheelchair bound, on the second floor, and unable to talk). I'm thankful that my son just happened to be with his father in Oregon when the fires were so bad there in August, and that he was able to help them evacuate their rural home (which survived) and pay for their hotel. And I'm thankful for the daughter who made us some masks, and, many years ago, made the cute little handprint turkey above.
© Amanda Pape - 2020 - e-mail me!
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