{"id":33815,"date":"2021-06-26T00:01:36","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T07:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=33815"},"modified":"2026-06-06T12:48:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T12:48:22","slug":"widowed-2020-was-a-very-good-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/widowed-2020-was-a-very-good-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Widowed: 2020 Was a Very Good Year — For Jon and Me"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"widowed<\/a>
Jon at work on his thriller. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

2020 was a very good year at our house.<\/p>\n

2020 didn’t look like much at the time — no all-day shopping expeditions to Walnut Creek for me. No daily trips to the produce section of the supermarket for Jon. No dinner-and-a-movie nights with our friends up the street. No jaunts to the Midwest for live action days with the grandchildren.<\/p>\n

A lot was missing in 2020 — on paper. But in fact, for Jon and me, 2020 was a very good year.<\/p>\n

It was nice.<\/p>\n

We were together, just the two of us, and we each had things to do. Jon worked on his thriller novel. I worked on my next book and on posts like this one. We Skyped with the grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Our ambitious household projects kept us in contact with the outside world, which we engaged through windows clouded with rock dust (the new patio)<\/a> and through sheets of plastic taped to the walls (our new dining room and deck<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Jon and I were dismayed at the loss of life to Covid-19 around the world. But the two of us were spared, and no one close to us succumbed.<\/p>\n

And so, 2020 was a very good year for the two of us. Jon was there. I was there. We went about our days in each other’s quiet company.<\/p>\n

\"widowed<\/a>
We had to take our own Christmas card photo last year. We set the camera on timer and grinned. Note the covid hairdos. Barbara Newhall photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the evening, we sat down to dinner together. We turned on the news and watched American democracy careen through the first ten months of 2020, then right itself in the eleventh. We worked on crossword puzzles.<\/p>\n

But mostly my husband and I took each other for granted. We took each other’s existence<\/em> for granted.<\/p>\n

My big, fat Webster’s Third<\/a> New International Dictionary devotes a couple long inches to the word granted<\/em>. One definition of granted reads something like this, “To give something that could be withheld.”<\/p>\n

Jon and I granted each other much during the 2020 shutdown. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, we granted each other our presence.<\/p>\n

We had time in each other’s company in 2020, lots of it. And it seemed there would be plenty more of that time in the years to come.<\/p>\n

But, of course, there wasn’t.<\/p>\n

Read more about Jon Newhall in the obituary<\/a> I wrote with his brother Tony in February. More about how our patio looked at “We’ve Added Another Room to Our House”<\/a>\u00a0— and how our remodel turned out at “Hey, HGTV Fans, Take a Look at Our Remodel.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"j2020<\/a><\/p>\n

2020 was a very good year for my husband and me. We had time for each other, and it seemed there was plenty more time ahead.\u00a0 Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2478,2479,187,34,29,689,2229,2419],"class_list":["post-33815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-widowed","tag-2478","tag-a-very-good-year","tag-death","tag-dont-miss","tag-jon","tag-marriage","tag-pandemic","tag-widowed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33815"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49516,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33815\/revisions\/49516"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}