Just last month, in a small church in a county where there are no rivers or streams hence no bridges, Lynell and I attended a funeral.
It wasn’t just anybody’s funeral, it was the service for the mother of our ‘daughter’ R.K. She was a high school intern of ours at the newspaper in Grant long ago and has been a part of our lives ever since.
It seems, nowadays, every time we go back to Grant it’s to say goodbye to someone who was part of a past chapter of our lives.
Officiating the service at the Catholic church and at the cemetery was Father Valerian Bartek. He oversaw the church there during the time we were there and was assigned to another parish shortly after we moved away. He told us after the cemetery service that he suffers from a stroke which had slowed his speech some and had affected his eyesight.
That’s not what I will remember most about seeing him. No, three words he spoke during the wake service have stuck in my mind since that day. The words were “Farewell and Welcome.”
In the last 12 months, all of us have been touched directly or indirectly by COVID. R.K.’s mother didn’t die from COVID. So many others have. We all know someone, perhaps a family member, a close friend or a business partner, or a friend of a friend who contracted COVID and died.
In that sense, time and circumstance has caused each of us to say “farewell” to a person we knew, valued as a friend, and loved.
It’s been heartbreaking, more to some than others, but we’ve all come to terms with the loss of life.
We’ve been forced to acknowledge how life is precious, how looking forward to tomorrow, next week, next month or next year is no guarantee, it will come to pass. We have all learned to grudgingly accept that COVID, if contracted, could end our lives.
Fortunately for us here in Antelope County, the dire prediction of as many as 300 deaths did not come to pass. So far, the count is seven. Actions were taken in anticipation of the worst, while hoping for the best.
For those who suffered and died, we’ve mourned their loss, wept tears as we said our farewells.
But that’s only half the story, as Fr. Bartak shared from the pulpit on that Saturday morning.
Some believe there’s no tomorrow, that’s their choice. As Christians, we believe in an afterlife where souls are freed from an earthly body worn out, and given a new body in Heaven. It’s called faith, most get it, some won’t. It’s there where the angels welcome us to eternity. A person of faith believes, with every fiber of their being, their loved ones go there only to be reunited in perpetual light.
I admit there is much that I don’t know, but I know from the teachings of the church that our God is a Loving God.
And so it is that I welcome the third week of March 2021. We have come through the biggest challenge posed to us in the 21st century. President Trump led the effort to create vaccines to protect us. President Biden is making the effort to make the vaccine available to everyone who wants it, the choice is yours as it should be.
Many have made COVID a political issue for personal gain. It was, is and will remain what it is, a virus which killed millions of people, just as other viruses have in past pandemics. Pandemics should not be defined with red or blue colors, it doesn’t discriminate between who has died and who has survived.
It was one year ago, COVID turned life in Antelope County upside down. The past 12 months are behind us. Now, it appears the beginning stages of a return to normal are at hand. We can see the ‘light’ at the end of the tunnel.
These words are appropriate today just as they were weeks ago to our ‘daughter’ and her family. ‘Farewell and Welcome’
xxxxx
Wow! What a weekend!
Unseasonably warm weather, plenty of sunshine and very little wind engulfed much of the state, it seemed centered here in Northeast Nebraska.
What a welcome relief, like a gift from God Almighty, after the harsh temperatures of just a few weeks ago.
Myself, my neighbors and everyone who had the chance, took the opportunity to get outside and bask unashamedly in this gift of warm sunshine.
Myself, I grabbed the snow shovel and said goodbye to the last of the snow on the north side of the house.
Each shovel was tossed forward, high into the air, to splash land on the driveway where it would melt in a matter of minutes.
The flagstand, suddenly visible, was quick to be reunited with the flagpole and Old’ Glory.
Once again, our nation’s colors fly proudly in front of the house.
Down the block, parents were outside with their children, some riding bicycles with training wheels, others going up and down the sidewalk on hoverboards.
Moms and dads, some with strollers, made their way down the street. It was like someone suddenly opened the doors of every-one’s homes and said, “Get out!, Get out!”
After lunch Saturday, I headed to the Antelope Country Club east of Neligh to say ‘hello’ to my golf cart which has spent the winter months in hibernation.
Covered by dirt and dust, it moved on command, backing out of the stall, then forward out the door into a wall of sunshine.
Everyone who owns a golf cart in Nebraska, knows the carts sit for four months, maybe five, until the weather warms up. Mine, and yours, is no exception. So, I spent maybe an hour cleaning the cart, checking the batteries, all the things that need to be done.
A quick drive along the edge of the course, then put it back in the cart shed.
During that time, there’s a sound, an irregular sound every few minutes. The sound is a golf ball striking the cart shed.
For many, it’s the first time out in months and those picture-perfect swings aren’t in tune yet. “Clank” is the sound the balls make. As I come up on one group on #9, I point out the ball near the cart shed, thinking it was theirs. It wasn’t, it was from the group playing their second shots on Hole #7.
It’s March, it happens.
The next group I find is Austin Good, Paiton Hoefer and Jack Wemhoff, there to get in a practice round as they will be playing golf for the Wolfpack this Spring. On this day, the golf cart they were going to use had ‘died.’ A look under the seat where the batteries are doesn’t solve the problem and the boys begin pushing the cart back to its stall.
The course was full of golfers Saturday, more came out Sunday when I stopped back to see if my cart was ready for action. It soon will be.
All of Saturday’s action took place while two hours away, by car, the finals of the Girls State Basketball Tournament were being played at the Pinnacle Bank Arena. Humphrey St. Francis, Weeping Water and Elkhorn North are just some of the teams that won state championships. For Elkhorn North, they made history winning a state championship in the school’s first year of existence. That’s a record which can only be tied, never beaten. They did it with a team of freshmen and sophomores leading the way.
The way their star player played, a freshman, they could be adding a few more trophies.
What I took away from the state tournament is this … There’s no reason the Wolfpack can’t be a state tournament team next year.
With nearly everyone back, another year wiser, stronger and making fewer mistakes, and if the injury bug doesn’t bite us like it did this year, we’re going to be better.
So, understand this, don’t plan on getting an early start to golf season next year, because if Coach Randy Eisenhauer learned a trick or two watching teams play at state, we have as good a shot as anyone to spend the first weekend of March 2022 in the Star City.
I, like you I bet, would like a taste of March Madness?
