Marshall vs. COVID-19
On March 11, 2020, I awoke to August moving around in Arden's apartment in Loveland Colorado. I asked her what she was doing, and she said, “I’m doing an 'Instacart' I’ll be back in an hour”. I got up to get ready for the day and accidentally woke Marshall up. The day before, we found out that the Ohio State University was closing down due to COVID-19. Marshall was a student ambassador at Columbus State Community College. We figured that because Ohio State had closed down, Columbus State would close down soon after.
"Look," Marshall vented, "I've put all this work and dedicated so much time to Columbus State, now that it’s closing I don't know what I'm going to do. Graduation probably isn’t even going to happen!"
I tried to tell him everything would be okay- not that I believed what I was saying. Honestly, I was only saying it because one of us had to be positive! Little did I know how right I was, specifically when talking about Marshall's life. I'm not going to say that this hasn't been hard on him, but I propose that he has had the best 2020 out of anyone I know!
The next day we flew into Cleveland, drove back to Columbus right as Ohio completely shut down and Marshall dropped me off. That weekend Marshall and a group of his friends hiked the Smoky Mountains. After that, he returned to Cleveland to be with his family during the quarantine.
When the quarantine was ending, I got a call from Marshall. He said he was coming back into town for a few days before leaving for a job at Battelle, which, just by sheer coincidence, ended up being in Montrose, Colorado! After seeing me, August, Aspen, and Kid that weekend, Marshall left to start his job on May 1st.
Marshall worked 12-hour days, seven days a week. He was running one of Battelle Memorial Institute's Critical Care Decontamination Systems. They removed contaminates from N95 respirators. Despite the grueling schedule, Marshall enjoyed his job, still managed to climb miles of mountains, and see Arden from time to time. I was (and still am) so proud of everything Marshall has done! But of course, I did miss him, and I couldn't wait for him to come back to Columbus.
To be continued...
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