I came down with Covid about a month ago after dodging it for two years. I’m in the high-risk category so I am fortunate that this year’s version is milder than last year’s. I didn’t even get sick enough to see my doctor. It probably helped that I am vaccinated and boosted. I took one of those self-administered tests, holed up at home and didn’t come out until I was symptom-free and tested negative.

Next year’s Covid may be a different story. We just don’t know yet.

Doing home testing means I won’t be counted among the 148,452 Knox Countians who have had confirmed or probable cases of Covid since March 2020. I count myself lucky, although I do tire pretty easily, which may or may not be an after-effect.

I have friends who have not been so fortunate. Some have become “long haulers” who haven’t been able to shake the sickness, and I wonder what the future holds for them. Some were really sick, and narrowly escaped the fate of the 1,515 Knox Countians who have died of the virus. A few didn’t make it and are included in that number.

One of the things that has bothered me most is hearing Covid deaths minimized by those who consider “high-risk” a euphemism for “expendable.” Last week, I came across a year-old message from a Facebook friend about his personal struggle with covid. He died just a few days later:

“It has been a crazy week around here. I have lost my sister Glenda, and Lisa and I both have the covid-19. This is the sickest I think I have ever been and this time I was pretty sure I could not do it no more because I have been really sick building up to this.

“The timing is awful. Lisa is really sick but she will not slow down and she keeps working for me. She was helping me get to my outdoor room and my legs kept buckling on me. I’m not sure how she got me there but we made it. My legs kept buckling forward and I had to actually flip over, the sofa cannot make it no more walking.

“Lisa and I have both taken both Pfizer vaccines as well as the boosters. I imagine we would be a lot worse if it had not been for that but this is the sickest I have been and have been in the hospital and it is terrible.

“Take it from me you do not want this stuff. I know we would have been dead without the fact we had it. I’m thank God I got both of mine. Please pray for me and Lisa she is really sick herself and will not slow down even though she has covid too. She works like a dog and I wish you would slow down. She is trying to keep things going here.

“Please keep us in prayer and all of the Johnson family who is my sister and for Lisa and I for dealing with this that we have just started to deal with. Please get your shots you don’t want the stuff and please keep my sister and memory. She was a very good one and had been in the nursing home for several years. God bless her soul.”

I wrote a story about him many years ago, so I knew him a little. His name was Phil Leadbetter and he was a Gibbs High School graduate, like four of my brothers. I knew he was an accomplished bluegrass musician, but he was so modest that it took me awhile to figure out that he was one of the finest dobro players in the world. He was a legit star who was deeply loved by his family and is greatly missed by his friends and fans and fellow musicians, who called him “Uncle Phil.” He was a prankster like my brother John (must be something in the water up there at GHS), a loving husband and father and a proud grandfather.

He was also a cancer survivor – he called himself a five-time survivor, since that was the number of treatments and relapses he had endured. This put him in the high-risk category for Covid, and he had to have been more aware of the peril he faced than most, since he was also a registered nurse. It is heartbreaking to read that post and think about the last days of this kind-hearted, humorous musical genius.

Here is a description of Phil in his Bluegrass Today obituary: “No one ever loved life more than Phil, a jolly jokester of the highest order, whose deep affection for his many friends in bluegrass was felt by all who knew him. If you met him backstage at a show, you were as likely to find him leaving prank messages on his friends’ phones as you were to see him spinning yarns among a group of pickers.”

This is his website: https://www.unclephilonline.com/

And here is a sample of his humor, videoed when he was teaching at Bluegrass Camp Germany in 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlSr2rMwVRE

Clearly, I missed out by not getting to know him better. But I do know enough to know that he was not expendable.

(Many thanks to Alan Sims for helping me sort out Covid statistics.)

Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.