Yup, that’s exactly why I’ve been thinking about her.
During her last couple of years, she didn’t get out a
whole lot, only to my house for any holidays and get-togethers, to church
sometimes, to Ladies Aid at church when she could get out. Gosh, I can’t remember
when she gave up driving, but it had to be a few years before she died. My
brother did most of her grocery shopping and I’d pick up anything else she
needed or help her order clothes from a catalog.
She would handle being quarantined just fine. As long
as she had her phone. Though she has been gone for over three years, sometimes,
when my phone rings around suppertime, I think it must be Mom checking in.
I am sure though that she would have a lot to say
about this pandemic, that she’d seen worse – born two years before the Great
Depression, she lived through World War II and all the wars since then, as well
as how many recessions and all sorts of upheaval.
She could be so cute. She told me a couple times how
she was at a youth meeting at church one time (that had to be in the mid-nineteen-forties),
when the pastor was talking about some weed that young people were smoking and
that it messed with your mind. Mom was like, “I’m sure he was talking about pot
and now look what it’s done to our society.” (I don’t mention that story to go
into my opinion on marijuana, I just brought it up as an example of how cute
Mom could be at times.)
I think her advice during the COVID19 outbreak would
be that people need to keep their heads on straight, think about people other
than themselves, listen to the news and your health care providers and to those
running the government but to make your own decisions how to deal with it.
Her heart would go out to struggling small businesses
and all the people who lost their jobs. She’d have me bring her a fish fry
every Friday night to support the local restaurants. I’d leave it at her door
and then back down the hall six feet until she came out and picked it up. She’d
be sewing face masks like a fiend. I’d probably pick them up at her door when I
dropped off her fish fry.
But at the end of the day, when she called me as I was
eating supper, she would say, “It’s all in God’s hands, but I’m gonna just stay
home.”
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