If you are old enough, you will remember this catchy jingle to Alka Seltzer. It was the kind that you could get stuck in your head. “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is!” Oh what a relief it is to say goodbye to 2020! I know not everything will magically get better now that the ball has dropped on New Year’s Eve. It is nice to have a clean slate and a new year to look forward to though.

I’ve been trying to find the words about what this year has been like. I’ve given up. I don’t think I can do it adequately. I also don’t think I need to remind anyone of all the turmoil that we experienced this last year. My Facebook memories these last two days have been of me and others expressing what the new year would hopefully bring us. Oh boy did we have NO IDEA what was to come our way. I have seen the worst and the best of humanity.

When my mom died 25 years ago when she was 50 years old and I was 28, I was reminded of how fragile life is and how we aren’t guaranteed how much time we have with someone. But then life gets busy and you tend to forget (or at least I did raising two little ones) until the next death comes along and knocks the wind out of you again. As hard as I tried, the fragility of it all faded. It was there, but never in the forefront of my thoughts. I’m not saying I should sit here wringing my hands worried about who is next. That is no way to live. Instead…I want to remember it so that I treat each day and more importantly each person that I come in contact with each day with love and kindness.

I don’t think this point could have been driven home any harder than what this year has done. I stood in this aisle at Target thirteen times this year. Thirteen. The most I’ve gone into this aisle others years is three. I stood here and over again trying to find the right card to express the sorrow I felt for my friends who lost loved ones. Nine of the thirteen times were due to Covid and the others were cancer or other natural causes.

Losing someone you love is hard. Having a good chunk of the population think that what your loved one died of to be fake is a pain I can’t imagine. Every time I saw someone online making fun of people for wearing masks or saying the virus was fake or some sort of conspiracy theory I felt the slap my friends must have felt.

2020 has definitely driven home the point that we don’t know how much time we have here. I don’t think of that and live in fear or worry. Instead it drives me to make each moment count. Each person count. I don’t know if I will ever forget this lesson now. I sure hope I don’t.

2021 is a clean slate.

I hope we can do better this year. I hope we can garner some much needed empathy for others. I hope we can do a better job at loving one another.

Because love matters…