Porous Canoe: 2021

Hello, my friends and interested parties!

I am back, kinda, but I am alive and well. I have had a disconnect from writing the past few years, but I have a sad story to tell, all about Life During Times of Plague. In other words, things changed rapidly for the worse, in the last couple years. So we begin my tale of woe.

It was still Winter, by the moon and the calendar. We were getting by, but certainly weren't flush, as my combined income from two pensions is about $1500.00, barely enough to pay the bills.In March, 2020, my Wife's oldest sister died. The official cause of death was massive heart attack, but she was never tested for Covid-19. Her husband was allowed to be with her when her life support was removed and she passed from this life. It was the only time in the three days she was hospitalized he was able to be with her. The pandemic we had just learned about had been spreading wildly for at least four months before our government finally told us a little about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19.

A month or so later my youngest uncle, my Mother's baby brother, passed. He was in a nursing home as his dementia required constant care. I was never told his cause of death, and I haven't researched it yet, and might never. He was seventy four years old at the time, and only 9 years older than me.

That summer, my oldest grandchild, a railroad track service crew foreman, tested positive for Covid 19. He drives his crew in a four-door service truck, and caught the virus from one of his men, riding in those cramped quarters. He was 23 and had few symptoms, and went back to work after his 14 day quarantine.

And that brings us up to the new year, 2021, which if nothing else has made the first year of the pandemic look like a mild inconvenience to many of us. I will pause here for a bit while I tend to the mundane tasks of my everyday existence, but this is nowhere near the end of this saga, and I will continue the story soon.