Hope Springs Eternal The hospital is full, and we are holding patients in the emergency department. We had a brief decrease in COVID patients, but that did not last long. And it was a full moon. I came home from work one day and saw this flower blooming in my flower bed. It is the first spring bloom that I have seen this year. I live in the South, so it is not unusual to have flowers bloom early, especially if it has been a warm winter. For some reason, though, this caught me off guard. And I felt like crying. It's such a small thing, yet it had a huge impact on me. There is hope. Despite all that we have been through in the last year, there is always hope, and this is one way that God reminds us.
February 20, 2021
Here’s a picture of what’s left in E’s bathroom, and it would make me cry in normal times, all the flotsam of the empty nest: a lighter from her Amsterdam adventure a couple years ago, her tampons, blue nail polish, hair pins. Now she can’t come back in here, to her childhood home, sans mask, until I am vaccinated. (J is but not me.) God, how I want us all just to be able to eat fried chicken, laugh, chase the cat, together, without masks.
March 13, 2021