2020: Goodbye, Adios, Farewell--We Won't Soon Forget You

 "Hope...Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'...”

― Alfred Lord Tennyson

2020.

Don’t let the door hit you in the fanny on the way out.  All’s well that ends well…or that ends not so well.  Should auld acquaintance be forgot? I’ve no idea what “auld” means but should 2020 be forgot? Yup. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Awful old year. The best is yet to come for the worst is almost done. (Made that one up myself!) New Year’s Eve! Old Year Leave!

I’m trying to come with up with as many New Year’s cliches as I can, then adapt them for this eve of 2020, when this year, this YEAR, finally, thankfully, comes to a close on the 31^st at just after 11:59:59 pm. Can’t come soon enough.

On a “normal” New Year’s Eve, I’d be in Florida with my beloved relatives: eating way too much of my Aunt Donna’s good cooking and getting a big steak out at a restaurant and going to the movies three or four times and treating my two cousins to brand new books at Barnes & Noble and reveling in the Christmas lights as they glow, dance, and blink, all strung from the palm trees.

But thanks to COVID there’s no chance I’ll get on a plane and I may just stay home. If I do decide to drive north and be with my “pod” friends, it will be in a very chilly place, as far from “highs in the seventies and sunny” as you can get. The love I’ll experience with them will absolutely be warm but it will be wicked cold outside. First time in 17 years I’m not heading south.

Thanks, COVID.          

There are so, so many other things from 2020 I just want to leave behind. Lockdowns. No attending a live baseball game in summer, for the first time in my adult life.  Zoom meetings and watching in shock and awe as family and friends and co-workers freeze up on the screen, like latter day Max Headrooms. When this is all finally over I won’t miss spending the majority of my time at my home office dining room table. Never thought I’d say it but I miss my real office. I will be so excited for the day when hugs are allowed again.  Can’t wait to stand in the receiving line at church after worship and shake as many hands as I want. Remember handshaking? I won’t miss being shocked at how many pages the obituaries take up in the Sunday newspaper, or hearing from friends that their parent or grandparent was taken by the virus. Won’t miss the worry I have for my eighty-something year old Mom and my immuno-compromised sister. God, please keep them safe.

But if I’m really, really honest with myself, there are actually things I want to hang onto from 2020. Lessons I want to keep, that have made me spiritually grow, because I walked through such an intense year and am almost at the end. My faith teaches me that redemption can be found even in the worst of times, that everything can be redeemed, found to have some good, some blessing.

So, post 2020, I want to never, ever want to take for granted the folks who love me in this life and the folks I love so much. My renewed connections this year with family and friends, though mostly virtual, have been a revelation. Who’d have thought a pandemic would deepen our human bonds?

My oldest and best friends in the world? We’ve met every single Thursday night since early spring and that weekly Zoom session has been a lifeline for me. Corny jokes and remembering when and burdens shared. What a gift. My brother somehow found a way in early November to throw me a COVID safe surprise birthday party. Thanks Ed. Best birthday ever! In the church I serve I’ve led a group of seniors in Zoom Bible study, almost every single Wednesday morning since March. God always shows up too. My choir friends and I mourn this life without in person singing, but still we faithfully gather virtually and have even recorded some songs. Amazing. And there’s my friend Jill. Since COVID broke out we’ve walked the many cul-de-sacs in my neighborhood on so many afternoons. With each step we listen and we complain and we laugh and we check in and we remember what it is to just be human and to support one other person in the walk called life. 

Goodbye 2020.  I will never, ever forget you. None of us will. You’ve broken our collective hearts but out of that heartache, we’ve actually been able to find some good too.

Farewell. Adieu. Adios. Aloha. See ya later alligator. Not.

That’s all folks. Thank God.