Robin Clement, co-owner of Monkless Belgian Ales, at her restaurant in Bend on Dec. 2.

In the past year, Robin and Todd Clement learned some life lessons.

If the Bend couple didn’t know they could survive launching, shutting down and reopening their new Monkless Belgian Ales brewpub, and the death of Robin Clement’s dad and uncle to COVID-19, they do now.

“COVID-19 has taken a lot from us,” said Robin Clement. “It makes you hold joy a bit more loosely.”

But the pandemic era was not without its triumphs for the Monkless brewers. Todd Clement, head brewer, earned a gold medal for one of its beers and the Mid-Size Brewpub of the Year at the 2020 Great American Beer Festival.

“I don’t think we’re on the other side of things now,” Robin Clement said. “COVID has changed people and their patterns.”

When her 76-year-old dad got COVID-19 in August he was fully vaccinated but had underlying health issues, she said. He was in a memory care facility in Bend. Luckily, facilities were allowed to have visitors and she didn’t have to see him through a window or use a walkie-talkie.

Her dad was a hospice patient and that made it so she could be by his side after he became ill with COVID-19, she said.

“Hospice didn’t call an ambulance to take him to the hospital, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to spend the final hours with him,” Clement said. “I was able to come in for an end-of-life visit and I just never left.

“It happened so quickly. It was really hard.”

As one of the few brewers in the Pacific Northwest making Belgian ales, Monkless got its start as a nano operation in the the Clements’ home garage. Todd Clement, a former organic chemist for a pharmaceutical company, learned to appreciate Belgian ales while traveling abroad.

The Clements early goal was to add a pub to their east-side taproom and brewing operations. They opened the restaurant on SW Industrial Boulevard on Oct. 30, 2019, and about five months later were shuttered because of COVID-19 related mandates.

That made 2020 a year of financial instability. Everything they had went to support the restaurant.

“We had just made this massive capital investment into a new restaurant then we got shut down,” Clement said. “Really 2020 was really bookended by this financial insecurity. It was devastating.”

To accommodate mandates, they purchased outdoor heaters and enclosed the rear patio on three sides. They did what they could by applying for federal aid whenever they qualified.

One time while restaurants were shuttered someone called the police on them as there were people inside the restaurant. It wasn’t that they were open for business; it was because they were giving food away to their employees rather than have it spoil.

The summer helped to put the financial insecurity in their rearview mirror, as business was good. But the labor shortage in the restaurant industry really has put the squeeze on any real growth.

“We’re still closed one day a week now,” Clement said. “I see some changes now, but it’s a slow process. I look back now and I realize how hard it was. But I know we can do hard things. 2020 was a reaffirmation that we can do hard things.”

With the pandemic still a part of daily life, nothing about 2021 was easy for Central Oregon residents. But there were triumphs, large and small, and bright moments worth noting.