Happy New Year! Last week, I went to a New Year's Eve party and our host showed us one of her family's New Year's Eve traditions. We filled pots with water (the size of your pot represented the size of your troubles in 2016) and tossed the water into the street while saying something in Cuban releasing all the nastiness (juju) that impacted your life. A clean slate for 2017.
I thought about 2016. Overall, my family's 2016 was not a bad year. It seemed like we were in the minority when I was reading social media the last two weeks of the year. While there were many famous icons who passed away throughout last year, no one in our family did. I'm sure that 2016 was not a great year for the family members those icons left behind. While we lost no one, I have quite a few friends who did. In the last week alone, a dear friend lost her father-in-law after his battle with ALS ended, another friend's mom passed suddenly, unexpectedly. Several friends had a parent who passed away in the last twelve months. My friend Laura died in June after a battle with cancer's resurgence, a battle very few people knew about until the end. She was way too young to leave this world and my heart broke for her, her husband, their son. Another friend lost her son (on his way to his college classes) in a tragic automobile accident. I can't imagine that there would be a pot big enough to fill for any of these people.
While we grieve many things - the passage of time, the loss of our youth, missed opportunity - nothing punches us so hard, knocks us down, seeps into the nooks and crannies of our minds and hearts the way the loss of someone we love does. If it were a finite thing, maybe, maybe it could be rationalized and justified. "I can get through this. In a month it won't hurt like this." And, that statement may be true...in a month. But, in one month and two weeks something may trigger another huge wave and it will suck you up, spit you out onto the shore, leave you cold and crying - the salt of your tears stinging your cheeks and eyes. Grief SUCKS. I hate it. I hate the scarred holes in my heart the losses leave behind, the aches for the presence of my mom at all of my children's milestones. The sweetness of her memory barely covers the bitterness of her absence. Grief sucks and if I had the power to take it away from all my friends who have been charged with this burden of bearing it, I would in a heartbeat.
But I can't. So instead, I would like 2017 to be filled with less grieving, more healing. Less dark, more light. More peace, more laughter, less tears. A smaller pot to fill with water on 12/31/17. A girl can hope.
