Close to Nowhere

I got most of this from about 10 different stories after Googling Gramma Lucia. Her story was featured on one of the morning news shows, I don't remember which one, but I imagine they all ran it.

I was fascinated at her wit in the interview. Sometimes I don't think that clearly at my young age...

Lucia DeClerck, 105, is the oldest resident in her nursing home in New Jersey. She tested positive for COVID-19 on her 105th birthday, one day after her second vaccine shot.

Born in 1916 in Hawaii to parents who came from Guatemala and Spain, she lived through the Spanish flu, two world wars and the deaths of three husbands and a son.

DeClerck learned that she had contracted the virus on her 105th birthday, Jan. 25, the day after she had gotten her second dose of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine. Getting the first shot apparently kept the virus from affecting her as badly as it could have

She showed few symptoms, a hospital administrator said. She was scared at first and did not like being isolated. But within two weeks she was back in her room, holding her rosary beads and wearing her trademark sunglasses and knit hat.

Her two surviving sons, five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren, call her Grandma Lucia ­ but she has a new moniker now: "The 105year-old bad-ass who kicked Covid."

She credits her recovery and her long life to several things, but, as she says ­ Prayer. Prayer. Prayer. One step at a time. No junk food."

Her long life and surviving the coronavirus, she says, also may have had something to do with another staple: the nine gin-soaked golden raisins she has eaten each morning for most of her life. "Fill a jar with golden raisins and gin," she explained. "Nine raisins a day after it sits for nine days."

Her children and grandchildren recall the ritual as just one of DeClerck's lifelong habits, like drinking aloe juice straight from the container and brushing her teeth with baking soda. (That worked, too: she did not have a cavity until she was 99, relatives said.)

When her family learned that she had contracted the virus, they braced for the worst. "We were very concerned," her son, Phillip Laws, 78, said. "But she's got a tenacity that is unbelievable," he added. "And she's got that rosary -- all the time."

A devout Catholic, DeClerck led rosary prayers each week at the nursing home and before the pandemic was a fixture at weekly Mass. A granddaughter laughed and said sometimes they thought

she was crazy with her rituals. But look at her now, she has beaten everything that's come her way.

Prayers for all of us... Linda Jones of Laws Hill is a former staff writer for The South Reporter. She is retired but continues her weekly column.