I keep saying “hey, at least things will be better next week.” And I keep being surprised by just how much worse each week gets.
Monday started with announcements of 2 key terminations in IT, restructuring as a result of the deep cuts in our provincial funding. One was my counterpart in managing our online learning environments - and he was absolutely key in our successful rapid adoption of Zoom last month. The other was a colleague I’ve known for almost a decade, who started as an IT Partner back when I was in IT. There was an announcement that up to 150 terminations will be coming in the coming weeks, but these 2 were the director-level first moves to set the stage for a full IT re-org.
Wednesday evening, we got a phone call from a nurse at the long term care facility where my parents live. Basically, dad’s breathing has quickly become very bad, and they don’t think he’ll last more than a day or 2. We should come see him soon. We hadn’t been able to visit him for the last month because of COVID (there’s an outbreak at the facility, so no visits are allowed). But, for this kind of thing, they make an exception. We rushed as fast as we could, got to the main entrance where we were screened for COVID, gowned and masked, and then told we hadn’t made it in time. He had passed while we were driving there.
The last couple of years had been really rough on him. Aphasia and dementia made it impossible for him to speak more than an occasionally-recognizable word. He couldn’t write or type. So, he was locked in with no way to communicate. But he kept his sense of humour right to the end.
He was tested for COVID, and it came back negative. But COVID absolutely nuked the quality of what turned out to be his last month.
2019 sucked in so many ways. 2020 is proving to be an order of magnitude worse, all around.
Hey, at least things will be better next week.