It started off right out of the gate really terrible. Covid hit our household on Christmas. I never got it. I guess I’m the lucky one. All 3 of my kids got it mildly, and got through it in a week or so. We opted out of getting them vaccinated and i don’t regret that decision at all. My wife came down with it after getting her shots and she was fine after a few days. My mom unfortunately got it and she got it pretty bad. She survived a lung transplant procedure back in late 2019, 2020 was supposed to be her year and 2021 was too, but unfortunate circumstances in 2021 landed her in my house to live with me for as long as she could possibly want to. Christmas was great. We kept our distance from everyone, made the best of the situation as we could. I quarantined my kids upstairs and never exposed my mom to anyone with symptoms. She ended up testing positive at the hospital on January 4th, and almost immediately I knew it was bad. She spent the next few days in the hospital getting worse and worse, we had some good conversation and I really did have a good chance to say goodbye to the most wonderful mom I could ever have. I never let her know any of the bad news, just kind of made the most memories in the remaining time that she had left. A week later, mom was intubated and put on a ventilator and a couple days after that, airlifted to the hospital where she got her lung transplant and placed on ECMO. She spent about a month on that life support and unfortunately Covid won the battle against her transplanted lung and I made the hardest decision of my life to withdraw that support a day after her 61st birthday on Valentine’s Day. After my mom died, we gave her probably the best funeral that we could give her. The obituary was the most amazing thing I have ever had a part of writing. We celebrated her life just like she’d probably had wanted. I pushed myself to focus on my work and my family after that. On April 18th, I took and passed the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam and then promptly started studying on the Professional while mixing in some Azure certifications. I should have another MS cert here in a week or two. It’s been 4 months since my mom has been gone. I miss her incredibly. She instilled a passion and love in me and all I can do is continue to make her proud by living the life she gave me and share her love and her humor with her grandchildren.