Last Day of December

A snowy grey day here on the last day of December 2020. I expect that most people are really happy to say goodbye to 2020. I am always excited by the roll over into a new year that is for certain. 2021 has such an interesting ring to it. When I was a child I met someone that my grandmother had struck up an acquaintance  with and she was an ophthalmologist. She told my grandmother (and this in my memory actually perhaps because it was a bit profound to a small child) that I would be blind by the time I was fifty. It is true that my eyes are rather complicated. That was a long time ago that that was said. I was just three years of age and knowledge of eye disease/limitations has grown rapidly. My grandmother was so convinced that her acquaintance was right that she taught me to read; that was how it affected her. She painstakingly taught me the letters of the alphabet and then words and then we started to read. I loved learning to read and became quite accomplished at that at a rather young age. I especially liked to read stories about traveling and far away places. By the time I was ten I was drawing spaceships as I just wanted to travel all over the galaxy. But whatever does that have to do with 2021 coming tomorrow? Nothing really but the end of the year always brings me back to thoughts about my grandmother as she usually had all of us over at some point early in the New Year. She celebrated New Years Day just as her family had in England. It was the only custom that she retained from her twenty years in England before she came to Canada. As soon as the Citizenship Act was passed in 1948 she immediately became a Canadian Citizen. It did not interest her to remain a British Subject. She was such a very interesting person. I was sad to lose her when I was just 21 years of age. The night she died I was sitting with her in the hospital and one of her fingers moved. She had had a stroke and basically was lost to the world on that day but I thought she could still hear me so I was singing one of her favourite songs and talking to her and her finger moved that last night of her life. Was it just an accidental happening? Who knows really but that evening when she died I had the most miraculous happening. I woke at 4:00 am hearing her calling my name but she was in the hospital several miles away from me. When my mother called a little later to tell me that she was gone she told me the story that the nurses told her which was that my grandmother had called out a name just before she passed. Coincidence or reality; does one ever really know but that has stayed with me from that day to this one and always for some reason it comes to mind every once in a while. I know she is with God as she was a very good person; always kind to people and spent many many hours knitting baby sets for baskets for northern communities. As 2020 draws to a close and I can remember my grandmother talking about the Spanish Influenza so that much of what I have said in the past about the Spanish Flu was from her I wonder if I will talk about COVID-19 in the future to some known/or unknown child in my future. I had never thought to live to the age of 75 actually and I have this strong desire to write which may yet come to fruition.