A “Grinch” at Christmas!

 

Al and I had an unexpected visitor just before Christmas…the Covid grinch! When Al woke up one morning during the week, he commented that he didn’t feel well and had been experiencing some achiness and chills during the night. He rested all day and didn’t have any energy.

When I mentioned Al’s illness to a neighbor during a conversation over the phone, she wondered if he had been tested for Covid. Covid? After our shots last fall, I had forgotten all about that. It hadn’t occurred to either Al or me to take a Covid test.

 Our sweet neighbor offered to drop off a kit later that day. I wasn’t having any symptoms and was pretty sure that I didn’t have it, but we both took the test anyway. Our hearts sank when Al tested positive. My test was negative, although it was a mystery why I hadn’t caught the contagious disease too.

Oh what timing for him to get the virus!  All our plans were cancelled as we both went into quarantine mode. Al headed straight to bed, where he stayed for the next couple of days.  He had trouble staying warm, with more chills and the typical cough.

People were telling us that Covid was going around, but a lighter version. Well, that was comforting…sort of!  Another neighbor informed me that she and her husband were recovering from it.

“We lost two weeks of our lives,” she said. “Just like that!”

That didn’t bode well for us. We couldn’t afford to lose two weeks with Christmas rapidly approaching.

We were sorry to miss a  family gathering at our son-in-law’s house on Friday night as well as attending the graduation of our grandson, Kevin, from Michigan State University the next day. But our main concern was whether we would be able to attend the Celebration of Life service for our daughter, Shanda, on Tuesday the 19^th.

Al had been planning on sharing a special memory of Shanda during the service for weeks in advance. Would he be well enough to go? It was going to be close.

On the morning of Kevin’s graduation, I wasn’t feeling well either and decided to take another test. Uh oh! This time it was positive. Whatever hope I had about attending the service for Shanda vanished. There was no way I could be out of isolation in three days even if I felt better.

Thankfully it was going to be livestreamed, so I could still watch it from home. But it would be hard not to be with our family and friends gathered in her memory and celebrating her life.

Years ago, one of my third graders was sitting at a picnic table on the school yard. I don’t remember what he had done, but assume that he was missing recess due to misbehavior in class that day. I sat on the bench across from him, keeping one eye on the energetic children and one eye on him.

“Mrs. Lowery,” he said in a remorseful tone, “life just isn’t fair sometimes!” That had to have come from an adult, maybe his mother. But his time-out was the consequence of a poor choice, not a curve ball thrown by life or the devil!

However, it is a true observation. Life just isn’t fair sometimes, as in the timing of the Covid grinch’s visit to our house. “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch!”* (*Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas)

Well, as it turned out, Al was able to participate in the service for Shanda, and I watched, prayed and cried sitting at the computer in our study. God blessed us greatly when He gave Shanda to us, Al’s only child and my step-daughter. Her life was a beautiful gift and her legacy of the love of music, of life, of her family and friends will continue on into the future.  

An overwhelming sense of God’s love filled me, knowing that death didn’t have the final word in Shanda’s life. As Paul wrote in Romans 8 nothing can separate us from God’s love as we come to Him through faith in Jesus.  Not even the Covid grinch!

 

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, not angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8: 38-39 NIV