“If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going”

(Apparently that wasn’t really said by Winston Churchill. Darn.)

Payments on the double mortgage added up to more than I could earn. The house had to be sold. Or maybe just half of it rented out? Swinging between those two options every 12 hours or so, I began to realize I was “losing it.”

A postcard I made up, to introduce potential buyers to my gardens. But it didn’t work.

I’ve always made decisions quickly, and followed through. Some didn’t work out well, so then of course there’s a new decision to make later.

Now, though, I couldn’t seem to decide at all. I didn’t know who I was. Grief swept through fairly often. Plus, thanks to years of staying alert for a halt in Dave’s breathing, a heart attack, a fall as he crossed the room (although he’d died a year and a half before this point, from none of the above), every sound in the big empty house at night kicked my body into full panic.

Yet a very strange thing happened when I connected, via Zoom, with a counselor 25 miles away, during the first autumn of the COVID pandemic. September 2020. Think back: What were YOU doing then?

No Masks When Zooming

A refresher on timeline: The first US vaccines for COVID started distribution in early 2021, and the age 60+ crowd (my group) got access on March 25, 2021. So in September 2020, as Vermont moved toward winter and being…