Happy New Year
How COVID Changed Everything
How a terrifying experience gave me gratitude to carry into 2023
This essay is in response to the “Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?” writing prompt from Our Human Family.
Recently, our entire family was struck with COVID. Me, my wife, kids, grandkids (including my granddaughter who’s a preemie), and maybe even the dog. It was bad. It hit us all like a truck out of nowhere. It went from initial symptoms to the flu x 10. Body aches, congestion, fever, loss of taste and smell, all of it. We’d managed to avoid the Coronavirus for nearly 3 years.
When it finally got us, it got us good.
I recently wrote about our family’s COVID experience. And while we all hated the whole affair, I found somewhat of a new appreciation for life. Like surviving a stroke at the age of 40 in 2014, my outlook changed. Maybe it’s not as drastic as the change that occurred 8 years ago, but it was most certainly a reminder of what’s important.
Prior to COVID, I was working myself to death much like I was prior to the stroke. It wasn’t healthy then just as it isn’t healthy now. I just wasn’t aware of it. I have a history of gradually working harder and harder only to inevitably either injure myself or exhaust myself. As a former…
