Reflections on the Roaring Year of 2020 (The Year of the great Pandemic)

 

Typically, around this time, December 31, final day of 2020, the Year of the Pandemic!  In Chinese astrology, it is the Year of the Gold Rat….the most unpredictable and unprecedented year for me as well as for everyone on this planet Earth….

How did we do?

How did I do?

These questions popped into my head this early morning… calling for some reflection and meditation on the year that has gone by…. 1 more day, today…. And it’s over.  We are at the junction, at the spring board into the New Year 2021! The coming year of the Metal Ox…the Ox animal being symbolized as hard working, diligent, dependable and determined.  This looks like a promising year for all of us; where we all have to work hard rebuilding what was lost in 2020... and with grit & determination, work at fixing what had been broken in our lives….

My reflections are:

Since I have been doing a lot of soul searching this year, like I’m sure most of you have done too…. (we really didn’t have a lot of choice on this matter.  2020, this year of the Covid-19 pandemic… affected all of us in many, many ways…But most of all, I believe, regardless of all that may have happened in your life this year… or in my life this year…. We all shared the common struggle of having too much time on our hands, and having to quarantine a lot, staying home a lot with our immediate families…not being able to go out as much.... All these were opportunities for self-reflection… Soul-searching was done on a global scale.)

All for the good, I hope?

For me it was. (If you have been following my past posts on FB or IG, or on my blogs here...

It was a good year, no matter the seeming catastrophical misfortunes that were dealt on me and my family by fate….

Everything that could happen, happened to us this year.  …. The hit & run on my car as I was on my way to work for our students’ first day back in school, our house fire on January 18^th, my radial bone fracture when I fell on the steps inspecting the damages on our home. Bruno, our beloved pet beagle of 10 years, getting cancer and dying on the night before President Trump announced the shutdown of our country…. Then yes, the shutdown of establishments except for essential businesses such as hospitals, clinics, groceries, the post office, etc.  ---- because the Coronavirus pandemic that hit home was getting out of control! 

Working from home, teaching & learning remotely for ALL of GCPS, and most school systems in the nation... People having to work from home too, who used to commute to work each day… a relief of some sort?  Then, my husband’s brother got Covid, and was hospitalized in ICU for almost a month, but recovered and is now back to “normal”... However, my father was not as blessed.  Our dearest Daddy Tommy, passed away from Covid complications… He was 83, August 31, 2020.  That was real tough…he was an anchor, a beacon of light for our entire Velasquez clan.  We, as a family had to deal with that using the technology afforded us.  We could not fly back home to the Philippines as we will need to quarantine for another two weeks.... The Velasquez siblings and our Mommy Letty did Zooming for video chats.... We organized his final days and cremation via Zoom (thank God for Zoom and FB Messenger)! 

His funeral ceremony was arranged this way, with a video we created to showcase his life on Earth... How he lived a full life.  My Daddy, he is and will be forever missed.  Then, what else could happen after all that?? 

So, I assumed my role in the family as the Messenger….I felt during that time of our daddy’s passing, that his spirit was using me to communicate with some family members that he wasn’t able to talk to and say his proper goodbyes to…. To my youngest brother, Dr. Rocky, and to my Mommy…I was the empath, the intermediary between the spirit world where my daddy was already in between and our physical realm of existence.  I had dreams some nights of him talking to me, and he would wake me up in the wee hours of the morning so I can free-write what he’s trying to tell me to tell others in my family. I have always been some sort of messenger, as I am ruled by the planet and god Mercury according to my zodiac sign of Gemini (the communicator)…So it was natural to me.

During this period of our collective “quarantine” – even though we started back teaching & learning in school buildings physically (with students given the choice of learning digitally from the safety of their homes).... We, teachers had no choice but to return to school and teach from there ( whether we were teaching online kids or in-person kids).  I felt that each one of us was challenged to look inside ourselves more deeply, and take that journey inwards.  Some of us got to know themselves better, some probably did not take full advantage of this opportunities of introspection… But I sure did. I wrote with a frenzy during this time… every morning from 4:30 am to about 6:00 am….I was on my laptop writing some thoughts, ideas, and hopes & fears down on paper or typing on the computer.  & sometimes I would be back at it that same night before bedtime.

I was prolific, I was also working on my first children’s book “The Misadventures of Wilhelmina”, my memoir was on the back burner, waiting to be finished… a continual work-in-progress as my life is still evolving.

I am now finished with “Wilhelmina”, all it needs now are the black-&-white illustrations that my husband Will (a really talented graphic artist) will be doing….then one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to Self-publish my very first book!

Secondly, the other New Year’s Resolution I could think of right now, is to be more of a MINIMALIST.  A lesson learned by Will, Diego & me, upon moving back to our home sweet home, Aspen Belle, with all the 100 or so large boxes of “stuff” that we have collected through the years...the 14 years of living here in this house that caught on fire.  We gave half of them away to Goodwill.

The fire to me symbolized more than destruction & chaos; but also it symbolized a chance for a fresh start… a rising from the embers.

Our lives did get disrupted by this fire, but we were also like Phoenix rising from the ashes….of our old lives.

…. 2020 was the crash and burn year!  So many senseless deaths from Covid-19 around the world, but even more so pronounced in the USA….then we also had the  BLM movement - the Black Lives Matter protests in the streets of major cities all across America.... We then had the Presidential Election on Nov. 2020... A lot was happening....now that was an understatement!

So, this New Year, 2021, to me is symbolized by a PHOENIX rising….

Am I ready for it, are we ready for all the goodness & hope that it could bring to this new world?  

A resounding YES in my heart...Bring it on!