Annus Horribilis

The thing about sheltering in place is I have only paid attention to what is going on right around me. At first I watched the local and national news, then that got too depressing and I only read a few online news stories. I basically stopped listening to news because it was bad and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Not knowing bad news somehow made me feel like it wasn’t that close to me. Then my mother called yesterday to tell me my Uncle’s house burned down. He is fine along with his son, daughter-in-law and six month old baby who live with him, but the house and everything they owned are gone. Since they live in a rural part of Pennsylvania it took fire engines 30 minutes to get to them. It was too late.

The thing about this Pandemic is that it is so horrible you forget about regular horrible stuff that still happens. My poor Uncle just lost his wife, my mother’s sister, last summer and now his house. As Queen Elizabeth put it the year Windsor burned, “This is an annus horribilis”

We are all having a horrible year, but some people are having it worse than others and it makes me feel helpless. So please pray for my Uncle and Cousins. It isn’t going to bring back their house and give them a place to live, but they need some miracle.

Since I had already given up the news, now I am also going to have to stop answering the phone and reading email to avoid bad news.