by Hope
Thursday morning I woke to a early morning phone call from my ex-husband. His mother passed.
He had just been to visit her. She had flu like symptoms and now she’s gone. When they came to take her to the morgue, they evidently did a quick virus test on her.
When Gymnast called to check on his dad this evening, he was told she had the Coronavirus.
I had two immediate thoughts when I heard the news….
1. I am so glad we made that trip in February to Chicago. It was the first time my kids had seen their paternal grandmother in 6 or 7 years at least. In fact, they had only seen her one other time in the years they would remember.
2. Gymnast is safe here with me. For the time being at least. With his dad now exposed, no telling what will happen in their home up there. I would be sick with sadness but mostly fear if Gymnast was still there. I know many in the BAD community are angry at me for insisting he come here as soon as it started to get bad. But I have no regrets.
Please pray for the kids father and his family as they mourn this loss and are unable to celebrate her life in the traditional sense.
Here in Georgia
Here on the other side of the country, we continue to visit my grandmother at her care center window. The residents are locked in their rooms 24 hours per day with no visitors allowed and they have at least one resident who has tested positive but is asymptomatic. (The resident was scheduled to move to another facility and that facility required a test.)
She is miserable and laments the decision to move her there. But we must make the best of it at this point. We are decorating her window with art. And Gymnast continues to make her smile with his ego and silliness.
The financial implications of the shutdown are growing daily. But I continue to see so many positives in our little community. Neighbors helping neighbors. Stores being resourceful and creative in how and what they offer. Families spending more time with each other than ever before. I have to keep focusing on these “silver linings” of this forced isolation.
In our home, every one has been challenged with getting creating in how they spend their time. In addition to art projects to cover Grandmama’s window, the twins’ built a desk out of scraps History Buff was able to get at work and we are looking at refinishing some furniture. Almost all of our furniture is antique, handed down from generation to generation and really not in good repair. I don’t expect we will restore anything to it’s original luster, but I have high hopes we can do some pretty unique changes.
Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 5 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.
I am so sorry about the kids grandma. I love what you have been doing for your grandma.
i dont think people had a problem with you bringing him home but the fact that there was no quarantine period for him. You seem very smart but tend to make up your own version of stories so they benefit you or benefit your point of view. I dont know why you do it but it gets old after a while. i have no idea why people keep giving you advice when its clear you wont listen to them since you know better. Prayers for the family affected, this virus its been terrible for all of us for so many different reasons. Good humans and kind acts are abundant!
^ THIS! People didn’t have a problem with you wanting your son out of the city once the virus hit. I certainly would have done the same! The issue was that you ignored the CDC quarantine rules and then lied about how long your son had been quarantined when you got push-back. And the biggest issue of all, at least in my mind, is you ultimately put the lives of innocent people who lived and worked at your grandmothers assisted living facility at risk. Your ex-MIL was likely infected by someone who didn’t show outward symptoms at the time of contact. The same exact thing could have happened to your grandmother or, worse, to an innocent resident at the assisted living facility who had no say in your actions. NOW do you understand why so many of us were beyond disgusted at your lack of proper quarantining when your son arrived in town?
I am truly sorry for the loss in your family. I hope the kids dad will be safe from this and that no one else in your family has to suffer. This virus is truly awful.
I’m so sorry to hear of your former MIL’s passing. May her memory be a blessing. I hope your family stays safe and well.
So sorry about your children’s grandmother. Do you see now why people were upset with you? How close you brought the virus to your own grandmother? gymnast could easily have been a carrier of the virus that killed his grandmother, and because of the decisions the adults in his life made, endangered his great-grandmother who he clearly loves vey much. If this doesn’t open your eyes, I don’t know what would.
And clearly he wasn’t good god stop with the negativity.
They didn’t know he wasn’t at the time. Glad he wasn’t, but that doesn’t change Marzy-D’s point.
Just because you managed to escape the consequences of your very bad choices, does not mean that you shouldn’t acknowledge that they **were** bad choices.
If someone drives drunk, they don’t get a free pass because they managed to get home without killing someone. No, they get called out in their immoral choice to endanger others for their own convenience.
If Hope has admitted she made a mistake in exposing her grandmother to danger, she would not have gotten this degree of pushback. But she doesn’t see anything wrong with what she did. So I don’t see any reason to stop with the “negativity” until she realizes she made a very bad and dangerous choice.
I’m so sorry for your family’s loss. It’s so hard when you can’t have a funeral to mourn her and celebrate her life.