The Good Things That Have Come from The Time of Covid

As dismayed as I am about the overreaction to Covid, there are some good things that have come out of it.

For one, my extended family never would have become clued into Zoom, and now we have regular meetings so everyone can see my grandmother, who is bed-ridden and on hospice. Some of the family strains and hurts that developed over the decades between my mother and her sisters are quickly healing as they realize they have more beliefs in common than they originally thought.

Another good thing is that I've been able to reconnect to my sister, Adeal. 

Adeal is the youngest of my two sisters and the fourth child of the six of us. She's had a hard life, and for many years, she wanted nothing to do with any of us unless we were willing to give her money. She has changed a great deal in the past five or six years, and now our relationship is growing strong again. 

Adeal drowned when she was just one year old. It was a horrible accident, and, fortunately, she was revived and suffered no permanent injuries from the drowning. Someday soon, I'll go into detail about the near death experience that she had when she drowned. It is a profound story. Adeal says that even though she was so very young when it happened, she still feels the indescribable love and sense of being home like it happened just a moment ago. 

When Adeal was five (and I remember this day very well), she was doing gymnastics in our living room. She was doing a backbend, but she had her face on the floor. This caused a blood vessel to pop in the back of her neck, and she ended up in the hospital with a brain hemorrhage. The doctors told us that the behavior center of her brain had been damaged, and that damage was obvious from the first day. Where Adeal had formerly been the sweetest little girl you could ever hope to meet, she was now an enraged harpy who flew off the handle at a moment's notice. We got used to the new normal, which was that you could never tell what was going to set her off. We walked on eggshells around her after that.

Unfortunately, though those of us who were older than Adeal knew what had happened, we never thought to talk about it with Adeal as she got older. It just never occurred to us that she didn't remember having that accident when she was five--or knew about the physical changes that had happened to her brain--and we got so in the habit of trying to never trigger her to fly completely off the handle (her tantrums were legendary and spectacular) that we were careful what subjects we brought up. Because of that, Adeal grew up wondering why she was so angry all the time and why she couldn't seem to control her anger like normal people. She developed deeply ingrained thought habits of self-loathing even though that sweet, caring, giving soul was still intact inside her. When my mother mentioned the accident to Adeal when Adeal was in her teens, it was both relieving for her to realize that she wasn't simply an inherently flawed individual and enraging because no one had told her about it when she was younger.

When she was in her early twenties, Adeal latched onto the first boy who paid attention to her, and he, unfortunately, was dealing with his own mental illness. He blamed her for everything bad that happened to him (which was a lot because he is emotionally stunted and no one could stand him, even his own family), and she accepted the blame because she thought she deserved it. He convinced her that we all hated her and despised her, and she believed him and spat in our faces. If we weren't willing to give them money, they wanted nothing to do with us. 

Adeal and JP spent the next twelve years being mostly homeless and miserable. To add to the emotional abuse, JP physically assaulted Adeal, and even though she left him twice, she went back both times within a matter of days. She still bears the pain from one of those assaults, which has caused permanent damage to her neck and spine. She can't work, and she has days when she can't even get out of bed.

In 2012, Adeal began to do some deep meditation, and it finally occurred to her that she deserved love and kindness. At that time, JP had somehow become concussed (I can't remember how--probably someone punched him, because even I wanted to punch him all the time and I am not a violent person), but he was sleeping a lot, and this gave her time to really think. They now owned a little dog, who was Adeal's favorite "person" in the world, and Adeal poured all of her love onto this dog, who returned it in spades. (Still does. He's adorable, and his name is Stewie.) Having such a sweet, innocent being love her so fiercely sparked the idea in Adeal that maybe she was worthy of and deserving of love. When JP treated Stewie poorly, she began to wonder about the way he was treating her and began questioning whether or not she was actually to blame for all of his hardships.

JP qualified for medical marijuana and started using it all the time, which mellowed him. Adeal asked if he wanted to go on a healing journey with her. He declined. So she finally left him for good and moved across the country to get as far away as possible and start a new life.

I've talked to Adeal twice this week. It has been a joyful thing for me, and my joy comes from seeing Adeal finally accept herself as a worthy person deserving of love and kindness. That sweet, giving, caring soul that she has always been has been set free. She's shedding the guilt and shame and the self-loathing that she has clung to for nearly 40 years. She's changing the way she thinks, becoming conscious of and halting the negative thought spirals that used to be habits. We have had some amazing conversations. Despite her physical pain, Adeal feels hope and excitement about her life. 

From my personal photo album. This is one of the very, very few photos of Adeal as a baby that still exist, as most of the family photos were tragically lost in a house-moving incident that still makes my mother's blood boil to this day. In this photo, Adeal is two or three years old and I am probably around nine. 

I'm not sure we would have re-connected quite so well had this Covid thing not happened. So, for that, I am grateful. God can take even the darkest of times and create beauty and joy.