I\u2019ve spent a lot of days on a tractor.\u00a0 Most are forgotten.\u00a0 Those are ones where the biggest concerns were picking a radio station and trying not to eat my 3:00 snack at 1:00.\u00a0 Days I remember are ones when I got stuck or broke down.<\/p>\n
Saturday was different.\u00a0 I was trying to finish up tillage after winter came in October.\u00a0 Now we were having summer in November.<\/p>\n
A few issues with equipment meant I was cutting it close to finish before the rain, so some tension there.\u00a0 The kids and Pam had various stresses in their lives which become my stresses; that\u2019s the way fathering and husbanding work.\u00a0 Beyond my field, the pandemic was growing more local than global.\u00a0 Plus, an election fog lay across America, the race for president undecided.<\/p>\n
Then there was my sister Judy.\u00a0 Judy is 16 years older than me.\u00a0 She is severely disabled, has been from birth.\u00a0 Judy is non-verbal and deaf.\u00a0 She left the farm when I was a toddler.\u00a0 There are stories about us teaming up together to get in some trouble.\u00a0 Judy went to live part of her life in institutions such as they were at the time.\u00a0 For thirty years she has been at Ridgewood, a group home in Worthington where she received gracious and generous care.<\/p>\n
Despite her handicaps, Judy was always warm-hearted and smiled readily. It was beautiful to see a person locked in a body that didn\u2019t work as well as most share joy the way she did.\u00a0\u00a0 In her innocence, our family often said her place in heaven was certain.\u00a0 She was always happy to see me.\u00a0 I joked with Pam that I wish other people were half as happy to see me.<\/p>\n
Nobles County has had high numbers for Covid.\u00a0 About ten days ago, we got word that a couple of the staff at Judy\u2019s home tested positive.\u00a0 A few days after that Judy had it.\u00a0 It began with a slight cough but got worse.\u00a0 A couple days later, she was hospitalized with what they called Covid pneumonia.<\/p>\n
All these things were in my head Friday night, and I tossed and turned more than slept.\u00a0 Sleep being futile, I got up several hours before the sun did.\u00a0 Just as I settled at the table with coffee, my phone rang.\u00a0 I don\u2019t get many calls at 4:30 AM.<\/p>\n
The call was to let me know that Judy was dying.<\/p>\n
The 4:30 call wasn\u2019t unexpected.\u00a0 Still, it was hard to hear.\u00a0 I waited a couple hours to call my sister JoAnn and to tell Pam.\u00a0 The hospital was not allowing visitors, a sign of these times.\u00a0 There wasn\u2019t much to do, so as the sun began lighting the farm, I headed to the tractor.<\/p>\n
I was coffee-ed up and tired at the same time.\u00a0 Emotions were knocking around in my head, running into each other.\u00a0 I started listening to news and music, flipping back and forth in my anxiousness.<\/p>\n
I can talk on my phone in our tillage tractor.\u00a0 As it turned to day, I had a series of calls with Judy\u2019s guardian, her doctor, and my sister.\u00a0 Judy\u2019s doctor in Worthington was exceptionally thoughtful and considerate, which meant a lot right then.\u00a0 He sounded beat down.\u00a0 The doctor had treated nearly a thousand Covid cases since spring.<\/p>\n
We found out the hospital was permitting one visitor for someone who was near death.\u00a0 Another round of calls followed.\u00a0 In the end, with our ages and surgery I\u2019m having after harvest, we decided it was too risky for JoAnn or me to go.\u00a0 Judy\u2019s doctor and guardian concurred that was the correct thing to do.\u00a0 Judy was not conscious and would not have recognized us.<\/p>\n
Still, if this were anything like a normal time, we would of course have gone to spend some final moments with our sister. \u00a0\u00a0That would have seemed so right.\u00a0 This felt so wrong<\/p>\n
None of this was handled lightly.\u00a0 I stopped the tractor for this last set of calls.\u00a0 When I hung up, I put my head down on the steering wheel.\u00a0 I confess to tearing up in that moment, my throat constricting. \u00a0It just seemed like too much.<\/p>\n
Right then, two things happened.\u00a0 As I lifted my head, a deer bound across the field a couple hundred feet in front of me, a young doe.\u00a0 Maybe she was spooked by hunters somewhere.\u00a0 My eyes followed her beautiful lope as she bound to the east.\u00a0 It seemed like that meant something.\u00a0 Only, I didn\u2019t know what.\u00a0 Regardless, it was a gift from nature, one that was appreciated.<\/p>\n
Then I got couple pings on my cell phone, texts from friends.\u00a0 The presidential race was being called.\u00a0 I allowed myself a brief space in time to feel relief.<\/p>\n
None of our country\u2019s problems was solved by that announcement.\u00a0 But maybe, sometime in a few months, we can go one day without a Tweet insulting someone, attacking our allies, finding another way to mistreat destitute asylum seekers, or announcing a policy to benefit the rich or hurt the environment.\u00a0 One day, I just want one day.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t had that in four years.<\/p>\n
Animosity and enmity have been growing in our country for years.\u00a0 But it is not a coincidence that when the very top person is proudly obnoxious to everyone who does not adore him, things declined precipitously.\u00a0 I said to a friend, I was nostalgic for the hatred and acrimony of the Bush\/Obama years.\u00a0 That was manageable.<\/p>\n
Into this toxic culture, comes a health threat like none seen in a century.\u00a0 It is clear that it could have been handled better.\u00a0 It has been in most other countries.\u00a0 Decent well-intentioned people who care about others, looking to scientists and medical experts, with intelligent leaders to organize our response, that should have been us.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 Our nation\u2019s leader attacked scientists and spoke \u201cuntruths,\u201d which is a nice way of saying \u201clies.\u201d\u00a0 We didn\u2019t knit together; we frayed.\u00a0 It is like winter came, and half of us refused to admit it\u2019s winter and won\u2019t wear coats just to prove it.<\/p>\n
Thinking about this makes me angry.\u00a0 I\u2019m tired of being angry.\u00a0 But my sister is dying of a virus that we were told is a hoax, under control, or will magically disappear.<\/p>\n
I put the tractor back in 8th<\/sup> gear and dropped the disc ripper behind me.\u00a0 I will try to spend the rest of the day praying as much as possible and being angry as little as I can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve spent a lot of days on a tractor.\u00a0 Most are forgotten.\u00a0 Those are ones where the biggest concerns were picking a radio station and trying not to eat my 3:00 snack at 1:00.\u00a0 Days I remember are ones when I got stuck or broke down. Saturday was different.\u00a0 I was trying to finish up …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 08:49:37","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120728,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120727\/revisions\/120728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}