This was a year we’d like to forget, but it will be remembered by all. Here are some of my key memories from 2020:

• The time spent in January in KY with my brothers, moving my Dad and stepmom from their independent home (where they were doing poorly) into a wonderful new assisted living facility. It was a massive job, with some tasks still in progress.
• The Nashville trip with Kathryn and Emily at the end of January.
• The trip K and I took to Cabo in early February. We were both sick (maybe COVID; we have our suspicions), but we wanted to make the trip. We pretty much just sat on the patio and watched whales and boats go by. The world still hadn’t rung the alarm bell when we left, so we can be forgiven for traveling then. That was our last airline flight of 2020.
• The realization in late March that things were going to be bad for the entire year. And it’s been worse than I imagined.
• The birth of grandson Jessamine Memphis Monsma (that’s still quite a name for the little guy) in May. And my subsequent cross-country drive to meet him.
• Taking grandson Hudson on his first fishing trip.
• My knee replacement surgery on August 31, then a month of rehab/recovery. I’m still amazed and grateful it went so well.
• Finishing the first draft of my novel and then realizing I was going to have to rewrite the damn thing. Still working on that.
• The second cross-country drive we took in October, to see kids and grandkids. We visited some of the Dionne family too.
• Seeing the Grand Canyon again and the AZ Meteor Crater for the first time.
• The crazy Presidential election, and POTUS 45’s subsequent and ongoing meltdown.
• The tough decisions we had to make about Christmas visitors. We were supposed to host 15 people, K’s side of the family, for the first time in a decade. That didn’t happen.
• Realizing recently that UK basketball season was going to be a bad one. Worst start in 110 years for UK. It figures.
• Living through an actual worldwide crisis, the pandemic, month after month. It’s like being a character in a dystopian movie. Probably the third worst disaster ever in America, after the Civil War and the 1918 flu.
• Visiting my Dad and stepmom by talking to them through a window. Kind of heartbreaking.
• The realization last month that much of 2021 will be a loss similar to 2020. There’s some hope on the horizon, but the bad times financially, pandemic-ly and culturally are far from over.

All in all, quite a year. One I will never forget, and hope to never repeat.