Before 2020 melts like a snowflake within 2021, I want to review where I’ve been—a sober preparation to bring in The New Year.

The major glitch in 2020 occurred with the implications of my terminal diagnosis, Interstitial Lung Disease with Rheumatoid Arthritis that confirmed my eligibility for hospice care, with weekly nursing and chaplain visits beginning in November 2019.

Initially over-medicated on Dexamethasone, my diagnosis drew tears of those around me. The finalization of my last wishes stressed my lawyer, broker, accountant, and funeral director. In between completing my ADLs and daily Heartwhisperings blogs, I continued studying the German theologian Ladislaus Boros and the transpersonal psychologist, Katherine Dowling Singh: both authors of significant material on death and dying. I would be ready for whatever comes, so I thought—No matter that my ILD was a slow developing illness.

Weeks slipped into months, seasons, into seasons. With the subtle increase in weakness, shortness of breath, and exhaustion, my passivity deepened. Others began helping me with personal care and my business. More drugs were offered, but leery of side effects, I declined. In hindsight, my sleep deprivation was largely the culprit.

With last September’s nightly “cocktail” of morpheme and Lorazapan, regular sleep returned, and recently, significant dreams and a tad more energy. Making speech has become work, however. I’m not always happy when the phone rings, but I answer anyway. 

Again, it seems that I’ve plateaued in my terminal disease, and therein, my limited life as I continue experiencing it, one day at a time.

But many were 2020’s gifts: spiritual growth through 12-Step work, daily blogging my terminal illness/old age, the support from friends and helpers, and the direction from significant dreams. With God’s grace, I hope to fill The New Year with His inspiration. It’s not about me. It never has been.