Page 43 - ActsCOVID-19_and_Me

BLESSINGS!
By Joan Duckett Bayleigh Chase
Somewhere down the road, my family will remember Mom and Dad, living in a cottage at Bayleigh Chase, complacent in their safety, security, and comfort, and how their lives were turned upside down!
Complacence: calm or secure; satisfaction with one’s self or lot; self-satisfied
Yes, that’s what my husband and I were feeling on the first day of January 2020 as we began our ninth year at Bayleigh Chase. With high hopes, we began a new year wishing our family and friends happiness, contentment, and good health.
We had heard that some strange, virulent disease was causing illness and death in far-off China. They called it COVID-19. Surely this wasn’t something to alarm us. A virus of some type plagued us every year. How unfortunate for those people, but certainly we did not need to worry.
Fast forward to March 2020. Our daughters, who live nearby, decided that there would be no more birthday or holiday celebrations for our family for fear of catching and spreading COVID-19. Both were adamant; the danger of this virus had moved to our shores. I was sad and felt that this was too extreme. Birthdays and holidays are joyous occasions meant to spend
with families. But now there will be no peanut butter birthday cakes, Dad’s fudge, homemade Easter eggs, spiral hams, coconut Easter lamb cakes, or Mrs. Tawes’s corn pudding? That can’t be possible! Well, my daughters were right, and I finally saw that our complacent lives would soon have to change, for our own well- being and that of others. My 85-year-old brain just couldn’t absorb and accept the changes in our lives. Finally, it did.
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