COVID hits home

So much going on right now, folks, that I hardly know where to start. Two weeks ago, my wife lost her dad. It was not unexpected. He was 92 and his condition had deteriorated for the 30 days before he died — dementia, dehydration, extreme fatigue and a host of other maladies. He was worn out.

The day before he died, as he was about to transition to Hospice, he tested positive for COVID. That’s where the nightmare begins. My wife and her mother had been with him in the immediately preceding days. 

Wife came home from Little Rock to quarantine and I left town, splitting my time between my son in Atlanta and my daughter in Huntsville.

Both Wife and her mother eventually tested positive.

Wife has been mostly asymptomatic but her mother did not fare as well. She began to have trouble breathing and was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Little Rock last Saturday. Last night she passed away.

There is very much I’m not saying here, but let me say this: COVID is real. It expedited the death of my father-in-law and it took the life of my mother-in-law. While my father-in-law was already ill, my mother-in-law was still healthy and vibrant. Now she’s gone.

My wife, on the heels of this illness herself, must now deal with losing both her parents in two weeks’ time.

I’m not blaming anyone. Life’s not easy and I get that.

But for god’s sake is it too much to ask to wear a mask, keep safe distances and fanatically wash your hands? We’re just about to have a vaccine and in the next year, maybe even sooner, life should start returning to some sense of normal.

Surely we can hang on and do our part until that time comes. Can’t we?