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A challenging Christmas time

My Nikkel’s Worth column

The Christmas season is usually a time for memories, both good and bad — but mostly good, as we look back on times we’ve shared with our closest family and friends.

With good memories in mind, we generally look forward to making new memories with our families … but what kind of memories are we going to have this year? A year most of us would like to forget?

This may cause some sadness for people this Christmas, because of the public health restrictions put on us in the name of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

The mental health state of a lot of people is already in a fragile state as the restrictions limit what we can and can’t do, and who we can see or spend time with.

Christmas is really not the time to be telling everyone to limit their contacts and refrain from gatherings, and yet this is exactly what we are being asked to do with the surge of COVID cases over the last couple of weeks across the country and here in Saskatchewan.

For our family, this will be a difficult time as my wife Tracy just lost her dad over the weekend. For anyone who has suffered a loss, I don’t need to tell you about the turmoil of emotions and grief mixed in with the flurry of activities to arrange for a funeral service, or the celebration of life as we would prefer to call it.

The COVID restrictions are not going to help that very much, and really, a family should not have to worry about that with everything else on their minds around the loss of a beloved family member.

Now, as of the time of this writing, we don’t know when the celebration of life will take place, or if we’ll be able to travel back to Ontario to take part in it, whether it’s this week, or some time in the New Year.

Against this background, it may be a challenge to celebrate Christmas, but the truth is it will be a challenge for a lot of families, for a lot of different reasons.

Some are dealing with grief, some are dealing with illness (and believe it or not, in spite of the newcasts, there are other illnesses than COVID-19) and some are dealing with the loss of a job or a business, again no thanks to our pandemic situation.

This will make it more crucial than ever for community members to support one another, to think of each other and help out where we can, even if it’s the donation of time and effort.

We need to support groups like the Salvation Army, because they are going to be handling a bigger load this holiday season than ever, with many people in need who haven’t had to use their services before. This is going to be a very different holiday, so let’s be kind to each other and help out.