The Importance of Family

What’s a better way to end a classic quarantine night than to finish it off with a movie or two? Or in my case, my family will typically spend hours trying to pick just one movie to watch, but usually end up binging Shark Tank on Hulu. Believe me, this took some convincing for me at first. As a 19 year old, I really didn’t think I wanted to spend my nights watching a show about entrepreneurs. Man, was I wrong! By the end of the night, my brothers and I had our own invention that we just know the sharks would love. It may involve the creation of an animal ambulance, but that’s a whole different story. Anyways, if there is one thing that this pandemic has made me realize, it is that family is everything. And while it’s unfortunate that it took a pandemic for me to truly notice this, I am glad it ended up having that affect. Although it’s not necessarily Covid that made me realize this, it definitely had to do with the circumstances of the quarantine itself. Over the past few months, I was able to form a strong relationship with my family and process what family means.

My mom started out the year kind of sick. Not due to Covid, fortunately, but a lot of other things. And my mom is never one to complain. It is almost weirdly difficult to come to terms with her being sick because she never shows it. Over the course of a few months, she just kind of started slowing down, it became harder for her to do certain tasks, and she began to have a lot of water weight trapped in her body. To this day we are not 100% sure what it is that is wrong. After being in and out of hospitals and doing a number of tests, it became defeating. The only thing we know for sure is that there is some sort of health issue with her kidneys. At least that’s all I know. Sometimes I wonder if my mom doesn’t tell us everything the doctor says because she doesn’t want to worry us.

And so, for all her health issues, comes a number of different medications. And I did not think anything of this. I assumed it was helping her. Until one day when she tried to get up from the couch after watching a movie with me. All of a sudden she couldn’t even sit up. She struggled to get some momentum to give herself a boost. I had no idea what to do. How do I help? I felt useless. I couldn’t get her up by myself without hurting her. Once my dad came racing home, things started to look better. We urged her to let us call an ambulance. She refused. She said it would be too embarrassing. After barely getting her to the car and into the hospital, we were finally given the first answer we’ve got in a long time. She broke her back.

I thought to myself, “How did she break her back? All she did was watch a movie”. The doctors then told us that the medicine she was taking for her sickness made her bones extremely weak and fragile causing them to break with just a sudden movement. But she needed that medicine in order to help her other sicknesses. So, what now? It was hard after this. She really couldn’t even do anything without accidentally causing harm to herself. It was so unbelievably hard for her to not go to work. She works two jobs and felt guilty just taking off for a week due to her injury. She objected to using a walker for as long as possible until she had no other choice but to try it. Ridiculous, I know! In total, she ended up breaking about 11 vertebrates along with a few discs as well. All just by quite literally doing nothing.

However, believe it or not, something good did come out of this. Because of this, I feel as though my family is closer than ever. We have never been one of those really closely knit families in the first place. Sure, we all got along, but that was about it. But once quarantine hit and my mom broke her back, it gave everyone a reason to come home for a bit. My two older brothers came home from their jobs and my other brother from college. I’m not entirely sure what made this different than all of us growing up together, but it felt like nothing before. We all of a sudden started realized how thankful we were to have a supportive and caring family in this time of confusion. Days became filled with optimism and bonding. As the months went by, I felt like I built a healthy relationship with all three of my individual brothers. And this is not to say we weren’t perfectly fine before, but now it felt like we all really knew each other. It is almost strange to me now that I would sometimes rather hang out with my family than my friends. From establishing inside jokes, to trying new activities, to having family movie nights, it took our minds off of all the bad going on for the time being. We tried exciting recipes, made some Tik Toks here and there (something I’d never thought I would get my 3 brothers to participate in), and we even started on some new projects together. For example, we built a fence in our backyard for our newly added pet chickens and ducks. Granted, I may have not been much help in this area, but it ended up turning out great!

And my mom is still getting better day by day. She has started to see different doctors in hopes to find out the real root of her sickness. You would never know she feels sick and has a broken back by just looking at her. She simply would not let you! Although I am not thankful for the virus, I am thankful for what the virus has let me learn about myself and my family. I am appreciative for the bond I have created with my family and continue to look on the bright side of this quarantine style living.