A Recap on the Last Two Years
Hi, hello. It’s been a minute since I properly wrote a post. I’ve felt quite disconnected from this space since mid-2019, maybe even before then. But this is a place I’ve been posting on for ~almost~ 7 years now (wow). As much as this is a place for me to share my thoughts and experiences, it’s also a place for me to document life moments and reflect on when I look back.
2019
T and I got married at the end of October 2019 and looking back now, I’m so glad we were able to have that day before COVID became a thing. We were able to celebrate with all of our loved ones and little did we know at the time, but it would be the last time we’d be with our friends and family for a long while.
At the end of 2019, T and I embarked on our 2 and a half week honeymoon adventure in Europe. One of my travel bucket list items was to visit Europe around Christmas time and visit Christmas markets. We figured that this was one of those times in our lives where we could ask for such time off during the holidays and not be questioned by family or work. Looking back, we’re extra glad we did it since we aren’t sure what traveling will look like for a while, plus what Christmas markets would look like in a post-COVID world.
I did post a few of our trip, but hopefully I can finish those posts this year! I felt like it was a bit insensitive to post them during 2020 but I still think they’d be fun to document and use as a reference in the future.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it on here before, but my mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer in early 2017. In late 2018, things were looking good and while the specific type of cancer my mom had would never allow her to be in remission, her doctor did say that the cancer was non-active. We all continued on with living our lives, T and I planned our wedding and life finally felt like it was back on track. Sometime after our wedding and before our honeymoon, my parents told me that things weren’t looking as good and the cancer was once again active. They were looking into a more aggressive form of chemo and that was going to start in December. We debated on canceling our honeymoon but my mom insisted that we just continue with our travel plans.
2020
We returned from our trip at the end of 2019 and rung in 2020 at home with a deep clean of our apartment. We celebrated birthdays for my brother, my mom, and my pup (Ollie) the first week of January and this new decade was off to a seemingly great start. That was quickly cut short when my mom was rushed to the ER a week later where doctors told us that she would need an emergency life saving surgery. We proceeded with the procedure but halfway through her heart stopped and while they were able to resuscitate her, they had to close up and halt any further work. The next few weeks could possibly take the cake as one of the worst times of my life. Every day felt like a battle, not knowing if those would be my mom’s last days, fighting with the hospital to keep on top of my mom’s needs, and just overall being there to support my dad during such an awful time. To anyone that has ever had to spend so much time in the hospital, I fully sympathize with you. Whether you were the one in the hospital, or there to support a loved one. I would not wish this on anyone.
Fortunately, things took an upward turn and my mom was able to remove her breathing tube and begin communicating with us. While things were still uncertain, this sliver of hope is all we could hang on to. Then began our fight with the hospital who argued that my mom’s condition was too “much” for them to handle and that she needed to be moved to a more able facility all the way up in San Francisco. Now we, and all of our family, are located in South Bay (Sunnyvale, Milpitas, and South San Jose) so that is quite a drive. We dealt with one of the most awful hospital coordinators and I could write an entire essay on how much I hated her guts and wish she would be blacklisted from ever working in a hospital again, but karma will come to her.
Unfortunately there was little we could do when this coordinator basically threatened to fire any nurse that would help my mom, so off to another hospital in SF she went. Luckily they allowed my dad to stay with my mom so that she would not be alone. That is, until March 2020 hit. With the rise in COVID cases, my dad had to leave the hospital which meant my mom was all alone. She hadn’t gained back all motor functions which also meant she couldn’t talk to us (via phone or FaceTime). It was an incredibly sad and uncertain time not being able to hear from her or know how she was doing. She continued to work with occupational therapists and physical therapists and in June, our family was able to bring her home. With COVID seemingly sticking around for a while, we wanted to have her closer to home so that we could spend whatever time we had left with her. With this option, it would allow us to have any necessary medical staff come over to the house and monitor her rather than her be in a hospital all alone. My dad never wants us to say that he sacrificed so much to take care of her, but he’ll probably never realize just how much it meant to all of us.
In the midst of all of this, in my own work life we moved to a work from home (WFH) life and that was rough in many ways. T and I were fortunate to have a 2 bedroom apartment and had previously converted the CHY beauty office into a joined office space so that T’s desk wouldn’t be in the living room like a college apartment. T’s job involves a lot of meetings so most of the day required me to be quiet and hide behind him on his camera while I worked lol. WFH was also challenging as I had become a senior paralegal at my firm and also with that, salaried. The line of work/personal life became blurred and I frequently found myself overworked and working into the late hours of the night. One of my coworkers went on maternity leave during this time as well and I covered her workload and reports for ~5 months or so and it was also one of the more stressful periods I had encountered. (I think the stress of those months burned me out for at least half a year after that lol.)
Around August 2020, it came time to decide if we wanted to renew our lease at our current apartment. At the beginning of 2020, we had discussed moving from our 2-bedroom to a 1-bedroom in hopes of saving a little extra $$$ since our goal was to buy a house. With COVID, we decided that was not in our best interests as we needed that extra space at home so we ended up moving to a different apartment complex under the same management company, but at a slightly lower rent cost. The perk of this was that my best friend also moved into this same complex so we were able to join quarantine pods and hang out a lot. Our dogs are also litter-brothers so it was nice for them to get lots of time together, especially since we were avoiding dog parks.
In October 2020, we had an extremely busy time at work and again I found myself working from 8AM - 11PM, it was extremely brutal and I still suffer from a little PTSD when work hints at a similarly busy work period. I felt a little guilty during this time as I spent less time with my mom, seeing her in person or even joining family FaceTime calls. My coworker was coming back from her maternity leave in mid-October and I decided to use that opportunity to take some time off and celebrate our 1-year wedding anniversary. We went down to San Luis Obispo (SLO) for a mini trip away since we figured we’d be outdoors most of the time and could socially distance ourselves enough from others. It was a mix of a break from the four walls of our apartment as well as a little R&R from a stressful work period.
In November 2020 we sadly lost my mom. It felt sudden, but it was just a moment I knew would happen one day. I shared with my dad that each morning a little piece of me feared looking at my phone in case I’d get some bad news. With COVID and Thanksgiving around the corner, it was slightly difficult getting a funeral date and even then it was very limited. We decided to keep it very small with family and close friends only, and decided we would do a virtual celebration of life (which was what my mom requested anyways). We quickly went through our first holiday season without my mom and it still feels like an almost out of body experience. Time went by quickly, but slowly, and it sometimes still feels very surreal.
2021
At the beginning of 2021 I felt like I just needed to focus on picking up the pieces of my life and figure out what a life without my mom looked like. But when it rains, it pours. My brother went through a massive and shocking life event which then proceeded to take over our lives. It pretty much ended up taking the rest of our year up, and it’s still going on now, but I won’t share many of those details since they are personal to him. But he is separating from his wife and is possibly going through one of the worst divorce/custody battles I’ve ever witnessed. TV shows aren’t even entertaining to watch anymore as I feel like I’m watching a soap opera unwrap live right before my eyes. Cliffhangers left and right, because who the fuck knows what will happen next.
Aside from that shit-show that eclipsed 2021, one main good thing that came out of the year was that T and I were able to buy our first house! After maybe about 10+ failed home offers where we lost out to others, an offer finally stuck. In May 2021 we moved in and it’s been a fun half year making this home ours and somewhat exploring this new neighborhood of ours. We promptly celebrated our 30th birthdays (omg, I know), and embraced our next decade of life and all the adventures we’ll have. Sometimes it’s sad to think how we lost our late 20s due to COVID, but c’est la vie.
Though this house is so beautiful and wonderful in so many ways, there are some areas we would like to change. I reached out to an interior designer that I’ve been following for a while in hopes of starting some updates to our home, and in exciting news she agreed to take our project! I plan to document and share our home renovation plans, so I hope you’re excited for that.
That basically catches you up on everything I’ve been up to, so hopefully as I post both “old” and “new” content, it’ll all make sense! Hope you have been well and that you are looking forward to some more content this year!