The Gift of Starting Over

 I used to blog… years and years ago.  And then I stopped.  Life got busy with kids going in a million different directions, my career going up and down and then nowhere and my husband holding us all together with his income, smiles and laughter while we struggled to get to appointments on time, make it to ball practices, proms, graduations and then college.

Today, we have been in our slow-er years for about 3-4 years now.  The pandemic changed our lifestyle. A Lot!  I stopped working outside the home, but I still have a part-time job that I work remotely from home.  All of our children are grown and out on their own and we have 3 grandchildren now.

We lost 17 family members and friends during 2020.  Not all were due to the pandemic.  Some passed on from old age, some from terminal illnesses, one from a car accident.  I think we know of 6 of the 17 were covid related… the others were contributed to the causes previously listed.  My great grandmother was the first to go on April 10th.  Then my dad on April 12.  Great Granny was old, very old.  She had lived a good long life and Poppy had been gone at least 20 years when she died.  My dad passed on due to the end stages of Alzheimer’s Disease.  We are glad he didn’t have to live through the 2020 crisis.  But as these early deaths happened, there were a lot of unknowns about Covid-19 and we were advised to not travel.  So we did not. 

The funeral home was nice enough to live stream Daddy’s funeral on Facebook for me and then they sent me a recording of the video.  My dad’s funeral was at the drive in movie theatre in Rural Retreat, VA. One of the first, if not the first drive-in movie theatre funerals in the nation and definitely the first in Virginia.

Of the 17 deaths in 2020, we attended one funeral and that was my husband’s grandmother who passed away in September.  We only attended that funeral because my husband’s mother was not able to travel for the funeral here and she asked that he give the eulogy in her place.

2020 was a rough year for us. 

But we also learned a few things.

1. 80% of what goes on outside of our four walls doesn’t really matter.  The petty disputes, snide remarks and garish gossip was a welcome loss.
2. Online shopping and grocery pick-up was a welcome addition since we both detest grocery shopping.
3. Our focus was redirected to what we wanted to do, what we wanted to achieve and how we wanted to live.
4. We didn’t have the societal pressure to assimilate because nobody was assimilating.
5. We learned to say No… even after the pandemic was over.
6. We learned to do what made us happy and we didn’t care if it was accepted by anyone else.

2020 and the pandemic did something for me that I have rarely heard anyone else talk about.

It gave me a reset.

A fresh start.

The gift of starting over. simplifying my life. deciding what makes me happy. allowing me the freedom to throw away the expectations of other and live only for myself and my family.

I will say that I have not totally maintained the simplified life I achieved during the pandemic, but I have maintained parts of it.

I fiercely guard my time.  I still say no to events I don’t want to attend.  I choose to spend more of my time in my home and around my house, tending to the needs that present themselves here.  Even with the massive amounts of repairs and the high costs of what those repairs will be, I am learning to love and appreciate my home for what it does give me… a refuge from the world.  A place to call my own. A quiet place where my mind and heart can ‘breathe.’