I’ve lost my three young adult children to the COVID pandemic but not in the way you might think

Mandated teacher. A title I didn’t imagine even six months ago, and I now wear it, albeit reluctantly as a kind of badge. A strange award for a freedom loving liberty preaching history and humanities teacher. I’m fortunate that my school is keeping my role waiting for me, but only if I get vaccinated when my writing sabbatical is over. I live in New Zealand where there is only one inoculation option and so right now, I’m not willing to comply.  After the turmoil and the drama of losing my beloved role, the peace of knowing I’m in God’s will very quickly settled upon me and hasn’t left. I’m doing what He asked of me as well as I can currently understand it.  My teaching vocation is on hold and God is in control. 

My primary vocation as a Catholic wife and mother to three young women has been the most profound and important vocation of my life.  My teaching vocation doesn’t touch the proverbial candle in comparison. Which leads me to my greater loss and even greater joy. All three of our daughters are leaving due to the COVID pandemic and the vaccine mandates. So now at the threshold of the new year and looking forward I see a future with no teaching vocation and a significantly altered vocation of motherhood.

It had to come sooner or later. I was fortunate enough to have my twenty-three-year-old, twenty-year-old and eighteen-year-old all living with us at our family home for the last two years after the eldest finished college and returned to her hometown. We have been through two years of lockdowns together. The story has already been told; family bonding, family fighting, family forgiveness and doing it again, day after day, week after week. Add to that family Rosary, which kept us knitted together at night and prepared us for the day ahead.

My eldest daughter is a talented educator and now also a mandated teacher. Leaving her beloved Middle School students behind prematurely, she is moving to the UK month to start a new role in a school does not impose the requirement of a vaccine to teach.  If she stocks up on Rapid Antigen Tests, she can be confident in having a negative result before she heads off to work, or if she gets COVID, she can tuck into bed with the early treatment protocol I am preparing to pack into her luggage. This is an opportunity that gives her hope and a future, so we are willing for her to go and have her adventure.

Her twenty old sister is her best friend. Number two daughter had itchy feet before anybody else and had her tickets booked and plans laid for her European working holiday long before COVID hit putting paid to her plans. The last two years have been a disappointment for her, but since she isn’t the sulky type, she has managed to live and learn and love under trying circumstances. Towards the end of 2021, she was studying and working part-time in hospitality and finally found a role she loved with a passion only to be told, she had to resign, because she isn’t ready to get vaccinated.  She did not have to think twice about leaving for England. She’s never left New Zealand, but she can hardly wait for her new adventure.

Our eighteen-year-old baby girl didn’t know what she wanted to do at the end of her final school year. She did know she didn’t want to go straight to college. The lockdown has taken its toll on her like many teens. Highly gregarious and socially active, daughter number three has dreams with options. She has been singing and acting since a young age and released two singles that she wrote herself before she turned seventeen.  Although the youngest, she is the most well-traveled and has been back and forth from the US to produce music. She is a creative force to be reckoned with and I feel like I must warn the world that she’s coming.  How can I let my baby go? How can I let her go even with her sisters to love and guide her on her travels? But she will also go, with our help and support, we will let her go, because there is no future for her here.

Empty Nester. A new title looms waiting to take a go at bumping Mandated Teacher from top spot of somewhat ignominious roles. There will be tears and wine and prayers and I will have a copy of Catholic writer Dana Nygaard’s “365 Dates to Renew your Christian marriage” (https://www.amazon.com/Dates-Renew-Your-Christian-Marriage/dp/1736683802) on my bedside table.  The COVID pandemic and resulting vaccine mandates have pushed my grown-up children out the door at the same time and together. God is asking my spouse and me to send them like envoys into their future. I hope and pray the peace settles but my motherly vocation although distanced and altered will not be put on hold and never cancelled.