“May your joy be as deep as the ocean and your sorrow as light as it’s foam.”
My first high school boyfriend wrote that quote to me inside a blank book he bought for me at Christmas that was intended for me to write in. You see, I wanted to be a writer back then. So, its actually pretty natural for me to have a blog even if I am not very faithful to it.
I can’t quite get that quote out of my head as I have spent many long moments on, near and over the ocean for the past 16 days.
In the summer of 2018 when we took the boys to Italy we spent a very short 8 hours of that trip in Venice. As we were taking a private water taxi from St. Mark’s square back to the train station I remember very clearly Alex and I standing up and leaning over the cabin of the boat and talking about how we would for sure come back when we could spend more time. I made it that close this weekend.
My dad and his wife Ginny recently turned 75 years old and generously decided to take my sister Molly, her husband Kevin and James and I on a vacation together. Lots of places were discussed. Perhaps a catamaran around the Virgin Islands for a week? So many options. Ultimately we decided on a cruise that started in Greece and ended in Italy with a two day post excursion in Venice. Dad only uses Viking as his cruse line and in fact has already booked an additional trip in a few years on another Viking ship to Egypt with a pre-stay in Jerusalem. Our current itinerary was perfect because it was a Viking cruise (so dad approved), it included a stop in Santorini (A destination on Molly’s bucket list) and it went back to VENICE which as we have already established, I have wanted to do following dipping my toes into the city of canals 4 years ago. And BONUS……..it was one of the few places in the world that dad had not seen.
It was the trip of a lifetime………until it wasn’t (sort of).
On day 7 of the trip I finished an excursion in Montenegro and hit the proverbial wall. I had woken up that morning with a sore throat and slight body aches but I REALLY wanted to continue so off I went. By the time I got back on the ship I was in horrific pain. Viking ships like to take advantage of offering Nordic spa treatments so after it was suggested that I go sit in the steam room and follow that with a trip to the snow room I thought I would give it a try. It bought me enough time to get through one last dinner on the ship with my family. When I woke up Wednesday morning I immediately visited the on-ship infirmary.
When you read about COVID being a painful awful disease for some, please do not doubt their word. While the lucky ones experience little to no symptoms, my body was in agony and I do not choose that word easily. I was truly suffering and all they could give me was ibuprofen, Tylenol and cough syrup. That, and another cabin in the isolation part of the ship. Turns out, I was not alone. There were enough of us to warrant an isolation wing right there on the Viking Sea. They let James stay with me under the proviso that he complete PCR testing every single day. By Wednesday night he was testing positive and by Thursday he was joining me in the world of total exhaustion and pain. It was pretty awful. I was drowning while sitting in my stateroom on a cruise ship.
At first their were tears. There were a lot of tears. (From most of us for different reasons I suppose). In some ways, that early pain and suffering was a blessing because it made me truly not care what I was about to miss. I understand how really sick people just want a way out of the misery. In the future when you sit with a very sick person who says they are ready to go, please believe them.
Very VERY slowly I started to come back around and feel like myself over the 5 ½ days that James and I were quarantined in cabin 5028 which measured 13X23.
When I swam back up to the surface and felt semi-alive once again I realized that even though my “trip of a lifetime” had been altered in ways I could not have predicted, in the end there were many hidden blessings. And lucky for me I like to write about life’s lesson’s and blessings. So, here ya go.
Being a person who tries to live at least a semi-faithful life I believe that there are no mistakes and that everything happens for a reason. If you know me you understand that I am not a Polly-Anna type woman so you can believe me when I say although I would have chosen this trip to go another direction, I have faith that we were where we were supposed to be.
Perhaps if I had stayed in the sun I would have developed skin cancer. Maybe if I had to endure hiking more days while navigating unsteady ancient terrain I would have fallen and broken something. Who knows?
Here’s the thing. Many of us have had COVID and many people have passed away as a result. We were fortunate in that we survived it so how can I justify whining about having it in the Mediterranean and living through it?!
Additionally:
We were on a Viking cruise where every room (even our quarantined room) has a private balcony where you can sit outside and watch another part of the world go by. If I were sick in Kirksville my view would not have changed at all.
My sister was smart enough to to send us a shower chair for our comfort. That thing was a Godsend and it came up from the ship’s customer service right away.
We had an entire ship of people to wait on us. We could pick up the phone and get a meal, more ice, more drinks, more anything really.
They did our laundry for free.
They had every episode of Downton Abbey on the ship and we had never seen it! We had quite the binge-a-thon in our delirium.
There was a doctor living with us on board the ship!
The medical staff stopped by every single day to evaluate us! They arrived every morning to take our temperatures and check our O2 levels.
Viking had enough experience to know that if we got off the ship in Italy that the Italian government would quarantine us for 21 days SO to avoid that trap we stayed on the ship as our cruise ended and the new one began. We heard the safety speech twice and we were impressed at how quickly these people can “turn a ship over” in a matter of hours.
We are convinced that in the long run we have saved money. Dad had the ship add their unused on-board credit to our account which paid for our spa treatments earlier in the week and having to miss Murano in Italy caused us to avoid taking a 2nd mortgage out on the house which is a statement I’m certain is not too far from the truth.
We were forced to just sit and do nothing. We could not leave our room and the internet was not great which prevented me from working. How often does that ever happen in adult life?!
None of those things woud have happened had we been in Kirksville and sick.
Until I became ill we were having the trip of a lifetime. We ate well and enjoyed some unforgettable times together while I laughed and laughed. And you all know I love to laugh. I saw things I have never seen and did things I have never done. It was amazing. And I am grateful for what I got to experience.
In Apollo 13, Tom Hank’s character Commander Jim Lovell narrates at the close of the film that his mission was coined a “successful failure.” I feel a little like that sometimes. When you are too sick and broken to care you abandon the notion of the trip of a lifetime and just focus solely on getting home. We had an 18 year old that we need to get off to college next week and that quickly became our focus.
On Monday the ship returned to Dubrovnik in Croatia and the Viking Sea staff bid farewell to James and I. Because he was still testing positive the country made him check in to a “clinic” for 3 days which based upon the pictures he took seemed like a cross between an American dorm room and a rehab facility of some sort.
I landed across town in a beautiful grand villa hotel where I spent my own 3 days in semi-isolation. (I had tested negative just before I got off the ship). I spent my time walking into old town so I did in fact get to see Dubrovnik which I thought I had missed since I was quarantined when the ship was in port the week before. Being Catholic I loved seeing the chapel of St. Blaise not to mention the convenient timing with just having had a sore throat. (Catholics get it).
I went to the pool for a few hours and that helped pass the time. People kept asking me how the food was but nothing tasted good to me at the time. I suppose if I were hungry it would have been fine.
As I finish this I am sitting in Frankfurt awaiting to fly back to the US. IF all goes well (we are still holding our breath) we will land in the afternoon in Chicago and drive the six hours back to the ‘ville. We hope to get up early the next morning and drive ourselves to Warensburg to visit our college freshman. Thank God for other mothers as his roommate John and his family are helping him to get settled as we fly back across the pond. Having to let go of the idea of us moving our son into his room was a tough pill to swallow. It’s hard to not think that we failed him. Maybe he was supposed to gain more independence and God knew this was the only way it could happen. Who knows. Seeing him the day after he moved in will have to suffice. This is the longest we have ever gone without seeing our youngest boy and frankly, I cannot wait to get my hands on him for a few minutes.
While James and I spent our many days quarantined together on the ship we watched the first 5 seasons of Downton Abbey. In one of the episodes Carson the head butler says that “the business of life is the acquisition of memories because in the end that’s all we have.” We did that. We acquired many memories on this trip though some were not at all what we expected. I guess that’s what keeps life interesting. After all, “life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.”
Fingers crossed that we will soon be looking down at the ocean as we head home. May you all have joy as deep as the ocean and sorrow as light as its foam.
