July 23, 2023

 

Good morning.

I’ve been thinking about the pandemic a lot lately and how we’ve moved passed it.

Or have we?

In trying to self-analyze why I’ve been suddenly hit with depression and cure myself, I realize what an emotional toll it took and how it totally and completely changed me and my family forever.

The pandemic occurred at a really pivotal time in our lives. The kids were in their early thirties and Gary and I were what we thought were a couple of years from retirement age. Eric and Natalie were newlyweds and literally made settlement on their house in Nashville in March of 2020, just days before everything shut down. It might have even been the day before.

Julie was fairly new to Seattle and I didn’t really believe she had decided to make it her permanent home. I was still used to Julie being a self-proclaimed nomad who lived everywhere from Tuscany to a pot farm in Humboldt County, California.

I finally had a job I adored after fifteen years of bouncing around from one nightmare to the next following almost thirty years at my beloved longtime job when my boss retired. Man, talk about taking something incredible for granted. But oh well, we all know that trips down memory lane are pointless and make you more depressed so…

Anyway, I had a great job and my boss and I had just gone through our first jury trial together in January of 2020 where we secured the highest personal injury verdict for a premises liability case in Pennsylvania for that year.

We didn’t even get the chance to celebrate. The news made the headlines in the legal world during late March of 2020.

The first months of the pandemic could not have been more horrifying. Gary and I watched news coverage of morgues overflowing with people over sixty years old…our age. In Italy, seniors over sixty were deemed to be expendable and left to die gasping for air so that overworked doctors could save the young. There were weeks when I was truly scared we would die on a weekend and no one would know because the kids were living their own nightmare and several days would go by where we wouldn’t hear from them.

We were terrified beyond belief.

And like I said, we couldn’t/wouldn’t express this fear to our kids thousands of miles away, because they were dealing with horrors of their own. As touring musicians, their income was completely cut off with no end in sight.

We aged during the pandemic. All of us. It robbed us of really important years.

This of course totally changed my kids, too. I worry that they’ll never feel the same about making music for a living again and that makes me sadder than anything. I know I am right about that and the only thing saving me is that other than typing it now, I don’t allow my brain to go down this path. I have no control over how others feel and I know that. My only job is to be here for my family when they need me.

But I’m a thinker and it’s hard.

Other terrible things happened during the pandemic that would normally bring us to our knees but was ten times worse then. Our dog died. Eric’s dog died. Julie’s relationship ended and she was facing homelessness. I found out I have a wonky heart.

Somehow, we survived everything.

So realizing how short life is, Gary and I retired in 2021 and suddenly time is flying by. And while we’re enjoying leisurely days just puttering around the house and going to the beach, fear has been creeping in. These carefree days can’t last. We’re approaching seventy years old. One or both of us will get sick. One or both of us will die. 

I have to stop thinking about this. We could have another twenty years, we could have another twenty seconds. Nobody knows.

But when you’re around seventy, the odds really increase you won’t be around in ten years.

I never thought about stuff like this before. It’s horrible.

But…

I can’t keep living in the future anymore than I can live in the past. I know this.

So, I’m writing this now as a reminder to be present. It’s sunny and we’re going out shopping for a special Sunday dinner tonight.

Today I am grateful we have mostly good physical health and everyone we love has that, too.  More importantly, Gary and the kids are happy. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

There’s really nothing else I need.

Okay, okay, I do admit to having an extra bounce in my step after Eric told me he’d be here for my birthday and Thanksgiving yesterday.  Haha too funny, he doesn’t know this because he hasn’t read it but the character in my new novel who saves the day is a Nashville record producer named Ric Swift and he’s totally based on Eric.

Life always imitates art, doesn’t it?

Onward.