CORONAVIRUS AND A FUNERAL...

The week after Dad passed away was very stressful.  It was the week that the Coronavirus really started to take off on Australian shores and suddenly we were faced with almost daily changes...

By the weekend after Dad's passing, the Government imposed bans on the numbers of people able to gather together..  We were limited to gatherings of no more than 500 people.  This was not going to affect us for Dad's funeral.  We did expect a rather large funeral though as Dad had lived a fairly high profile life, first as a GMH dealer and ran one of the most successful dealerships in Australia.  He had also traveled to GMH in Detroit to attend a management school there and was a training dealership when he arrived home especially in the implementation of computers into Dealerships.

He had also served as the Mayor of Bundaberg so had lots of connections to this town.  He was the Chairman of the Wide Bay Electricity Board as well as a stint as National President of Gideon's International and not just that he went to a large church where he was well known.  Lots of folk had rung indicating that they wanted to be at Dad's funeral.  We had people wanting to fly in from interstate and lots of folk from Bundaberg had indicated that they were planning to attend..

By the Wednesday before the funeral, and after the funeral notice had gone into the paper advertising his funeral and time, the Government bought in new restrictions.  Now we were limited to only 100 people at any gathering.  This changed things for Dad's funeral and meant we had to try and get word out there that now his funeral was going to be restricted to just immediate family and his sibling's family..  I know in the great scheme of things this is a small problem, but at the time,  I felt pretty gutted that we couldn't give Dad the send off he deserved and we were having to restrict so many people from coming to pay their respects....

Oh how thankful I am today though for this small mercy,  as things were about to take an even more drastic turn of events a couple of days after Dad's funeral with even stricter measures coming in.

Another good friend of ours passed away the morning of Dad's funeral and her funeral was due to be held the following Friday... With the new measures in place as of Monday 23th March, the numbers attending funerals had been reduced to 10 people.  Not even all of her children and their families could attend.

The week before Dad's funeral was raw... so many emotions.... so many changes... Our funeral director was a good friend of Dad's and came out of retirement to do Dad's funeral... a beautiful man, and he had his wife in a nursing home as she has Dementia.  With the new restrictions coming in, the nursing homes were going into lock down and he was unable to spend his days by his wife's side.  This was a distressing time for him.  We had organised a light luncheon for after Dad's funeral... this all had to be scrapped and something else arranged.  The phone constantly rang,  the Council in Bundaberg, the News Mail wanting information on Dad to do a story,  friends and family,  so much so that it was impossible to get some down time to even get my thoughts together.   There were nights I just cried... the raw emotions of missing my Dad, never seeing his beautiful face again,  the sadness at not being able to have the funeral for him we wanted to have (considering he had pretty much organised the bulk of it) trying to set up a life stream of the funeral for those that couldn't attend... so many changes each day...

There was another part of me though that was happy that Dad did not have to live through all these changes... He didn't have to live an isolated life....   All the things that he enjoyed doing,  all the places he went each day and week were all shut down... Because of his age, he would not be able to have visitors... His lonely life would have gotten so much lonelier...

So whilst there is a lot of sadness there is also a  ton of gratitude and thankfulness that Dad did not live to see these enormous changes to the fabric of our lives, and that his last days on this earth were spent being surrounded by those he loved and those that loved him... A week later this would not have been allowed to have happened...  I am also so thankful that he was covered in prayer by not only those that loved him but also a beautiful young Christian nurse that God had placed on his ward to not only bless and comfort Dad but us his family also....

God is still faithful... in fact when looking back, we have all been blessed so much and I am truly in awe of the goodness we have experienced in our lives particularly in relation to the passing of both our parents... Blessed beyond measure I would say............................