Page 60 - FDCC Pandemic Book

Living in a Pandemic: A Collection of Stories on Coping, Resilience & Hope
We continued occasional dinners with our family. In the midst of a raging pandemic, we began planning for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the very essence of our most treasured family memories.
At Thanksgiving, we gathered with our children and grandchildren for not just a meal, but for a time of true thanksgiving for our blessings and health. Sadly, we didn’t feel it advisable to include our parents, but visited with them privately and counted them among the best things in our lives. Carol Anne’s mother and my dad have seen much greater trials in the Depression and WWII, and have instilled in us the courage to know that we can survive this with patience, purpose and a bit of good luck.
Christmas for the greater Gallivan Clan usually begins with a large party of parents, siblings, cousins, children and grandchildren. 2020 was the first time in my life that we were not together. We live with the hope that there will be more great times ahead at the extended Gallivan Clan Christmas Gala. We celebrated Christmas Day with our immediate family and I wouldn’t take anything for that time with our children and grandchildren. I have had to answer some tough questions in my career but none tougher than, “Pappy what if Santa Claus catches COVID before he gets to our house?”
The New Year brings hope; the vaccine brings hope; the ties that bind family and friends bring hope; and our faith brings promises of better days to come. I have often said that I would rather be lucky than good, and perhaps it is just luck that we are COVID free thus far. We have had friends and extended family members who have caught COVID-19. A few have fallen victim to this insidious disease, but thankfully, most are fine. We pray for all who have been impacted by COVID-19 and for an end to this scourge.
Allow me to conclude with an entry taken from the diary of Etty Hillesum. She was young Jewish woman interned at Westerbrook. While she awaited transfer to Auschwitz, where she would die in 1943, she wrote,
“I often walk with a spring in my step along the barbed wire and then time and again it soars straight from my heart — I can’t help it, that’s just the way it is, like some elementary force — the feeling that life is glorious and magnificent, and that one day we shall be building a whole new world. Against every new outrage and every fresh horror we shall put up one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not succumb...”
We have not flattened the curve, but neither have we succumbed. Carol Anne and I know that “one more piece of love and goodness” from the Good Lord, our family, and our friends has given us “strength from within ourselves”.
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