Well no doubt this years St Patricks Day is different. No parades, not even the big ones In Ireland, New York, Boston and even the smaller ones here in New Jersey.
I remember doing the circuit as a member of the Newark Fire Department's Pipe Band. Hoboken, Seaside Heights, Union, and Newark, always a good day to celebrate our own or our neighbors heritage. If I remember Belmar was able to get theirs in this year before the world started to shut down.
If I, well we, survive this coronavirus pandemic I will happy at least to say I was able to visit the island of the Irish once before the end. In 2018 Theresa and I took the trip. Wasn't perfect timing as 10 days overseas can add up quickly. I still think most of that trip still sits on our credit card. But if we didn't go then, who knows when we might have had the vacation of a lifetime. My advice- don't wait to start living.
I haven't done my 23 and Me, so who knows really what my make-up is. I am a proud American, proud to be Irish and Polish and whatever else snuck in. In these times, it really doesn't matter, we are all humans, and connected in the triumphs and tragedies that present themselves to us.
I have experienced in person, 9/11, Katrina, Hurricane Sandy. There have been people who have witnessed far more than I have in their lives. Other storms, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, the wars in the Middle East, Vietnam, Korea, World War II. There have been recessions and booms. And then there's the things that happen to us on a smaller, but no less traumatic scale, suicides, cancer, car accidents, work and sports accidents, just getting old, and at times being kept alive longer than we should. For many there's been job losses, bankruptcy, divorce, abuse, too many hardships to list.
But remember its not what you do when people are looking, its what you do when they are not. Integrity, honesty, sacrificing for others, putting your life on the line for your neighbor, especially in hard times, will be how you judge yourself and others, and how you are to be judged, if you believe, when it is time to move on to that next place that I hope to get to one day, hopefully later than sooner.
Take care of yourselves, but more importantly take care of others, everyday, not just in a time of crisis or when people are watching.