Hope for 2021.

No one will disagree that this year has been incredibly difficult on so many levels. Life stopped, then started again with restrictions and radical new routines. The virus that started out small in one community has spread Worldwide with a speed that has been hard to keep up with. We have made changes to how we work, how we live, how we play, and even how we die and how we grieve. Nothing is the same. We grieve for what was, what we can't have in the moment and we even grieve for people we have never met who have succumbed to the virus. We carry fear in our minds, our bodies and our hearts. We miss the activities that we once loved, and we have all done our very best to keep safe and healthy. At the end of any year, previous to 2020, many of us will often look back on the year and feel gratitude for the special moments, and hope the tough experiences were met with grace. We plan for the next year and some even make resolutions for change. But what do we do at the end of a year like we've never experienced before? How do we look forward to the future, when on an hourly basis, it keeps changing before we can even take it all in?

I've been mulling this over the last few weeks as I go thru the motions to close out my now full and very worn out daytimer. I love this time of year to reflect back on what worked, what didn't go so well and what can be improved upon. I truly wish to leave this Earth having lived my very best life. But how does this work, in the middle of a Pandemic? Here's what I've come up with to get myself moving forward as we say goodbye to 2020 and welcome 2021, with trepidation ....

Hope stands out for me as a word that is still here at the end of this year. Hope is free. Hope can be contagious. Hope can carry us through anything. Many hoped for a vaccine to eradicate this viral journey by next Summer. Many thought it wouldn't happen, that it would take years or not be effective. And yet here we are, in December of this same year, with more than one vaccine ready for distribution. We have hope the numbers will drop, even on days when they are super high again. We have hope our kids will fare well through this year where their schooling is different. Yet, they are still learning and growing and playing. We have hope that though it feels like life has stalled, we are still living, and moving, and being. 

We began the construction of the new residential in the Summer of 2019. In the midst of a Pandemic that none of us planned for, we managed to continue to work towards our long-standing goal of a residential hospice for the Greater Edmonton Region. We are ending 2020 with boxes to unpack, and staff and volunteers to train. We are so hopeful for the warmth, the care and the compassion that our residents who will soon reside in this special place as they journey toward their final moments will experience. And bright and beautiful spaces for our grieving clients, of all ages, to explore their unique paths as they navigate their mourning with our dedicated team. 

Hope began this project. Hope saw up through. And hope is all around us as we complete our final tasks as we work towards our opening day. 

My hope for you, as you enter 2021, is that this one small word will help carry you thru this New Year.

~ Chy