2021 was the second year of the life changing pandemic which seemingly will never end with multiple variants. Evidently the pandemic will become endemic. We continued to hunker down in New Mexico with a few trips in our camper van to southern Colorado and Arizona as well as around the State of New Mexico. We were fortunate to get 3 vaccinations each by late Fall and have access to drop-in the car grocery pickups in Grants and Gallup. I was glad that we had made some good real estate contracts in recent years as that was our primary income these days. Painting sales, workshops, and anything that required an in-person experience was not possible until after the middle of the year. Michael did manage 3 outdoor painting retreats beginning in August with Lubec, Maine, Taos, New Mexico in October, and finally Sedona in November and he had a successful end of year holiday sale. Luckily no one in my immediate family got Covid19, although a member of my extended family did die of the disease in British Columbia, Canada at an advanced age.
In early July, around the time the entire family would have been visiting my parents in a normal year on Campobello Island, NB, my Dad suffered a fall which caused some significant back pain for several months. He was immediately bedridden and survived for nearly 4 months in hospice until he faded away without pain, we believe, at the end. It was extremely sad to lose my Dad, but family members got to make a final visit or two during those nearly 120 days. Dad would have been 91 years old in January 2022, but as my Mom said, "we were lucky to have him as long as we did." I also calculated that he had over 33,000 days of life which he dearly loved, and almost all of it was wonderful, which gives me solace these days.
We hope next year will be a little more "normal" and we can make the trip to Campobello Island, New Brunswick with my Mother after we have a family memorial service for my Dad in Vermont on land my parents still own at his "cabin" which he built with a friend.
