New Year, New You?
I’ve been reflecting quite a bit on the year 2024. When I looked back at my goals and the person I wanted to become, I had really strong and good intentions. Many of the goals I achieved and maintained yet, many of the goals eroded into nothing. Each year, I know life throws curve balls and adversity - the year of 2024 was one of the most difficult years I’ve experienced in a long time.
In the summer of 2024, my mother-in-law unexpectedly passed away when she received routine care at a local hospital. Our family was in complete shock, agony, and despair. My husband and brother-in-law lost their mother, my father-in-law lost his life-long companion, and my son lost a grandma who he will never truly know. I lost her too. All of her stories, her happiness, her cooking recipes, her silly jokes, and her light. She was just suddenly gone. Karolynn was robbed of so many things when she passed away. She worked so incredibly hard to retire early and she did but she was only able to enjoy just one year of retirement before she passed. That put things into perspective for me - so many elders have told me to save for retirement to work now and live later… that’s not me anymore. I’m living my life now, not later.
Karolynn was also just getting to the great part of being a grandma. Our son was starting to really recognize people and interact with them as a toddler instead of a baby. A couple days after Karolynn passed away, he called Lee “Gpa” and asked “where Gma is?” Ugh… just gut wrenching. A week after she passed away, our son started riding a bike, something that Karolynn said she wanted to watch him do. Karolynn told me about how my husband learned how to ride a bike at age 2 and I just wanted to call her and tell her to come over to our house to watch our son ride his bike… also at the age of 2. Karolynn was just robbed and so were all of us.
When she passed away, I had a difficult time writing. Life felt so off-balance and many things that seemed to matter before faded into nothing. My family, friends, and work colleagues kept telling me that things will be hard for a while and then you’ll start getting back into a new normal. I agreed with them until a few months after my mother-in-law passed away, my dog passed away too.
Gus was my best buddy - in all ways that a dog can be. We got Gus as a puppy and raised him into the ridiculous dog that he became. Gus was a member of the family and was treated like such. He moved across the country and travelled the U.S. with us. Gus was absolutely “my dog” and preferred me over my husband (I mean I just spoiled the crap out of him and spent so much time with him). If I were ever lonely or sad, just sitting with Gus made me feel better. He hiked with me almost every weekend, he came with me to the mountains and beaches, and he was with me when I struggled with fertility issues. At one point, I thought he would be our only “family” if we were not able to have children. He was in the prime of his life but still he passed away before he was 6-years-old. A dog fills a unique hole in your heart that you didn’t even know was there but once they are gone, you feel the hole just tear open.
They say that when a loved one passes away, it provides you the gift of perspective - to re-focus on what matters and to strip away all the unnecessary worries in your life. I strongly believe that is true. So true, that I’ve made very significant changes over the past 6-months. How I spend my time, my money, and my worries has significantly changed. The emphasis that I place on my professional career vs. my personal life has re-balanced in the right way where I can focus on what is truly important and shrug off most everything else. I’ve also been thinking about my role in Mama’s Book Cellar - what I wanted it to be and what it turned into. How I struggled to put this on a shelf for a while but then if I’m honest with myself, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.
When I was grieving and my family was grieving, I didn’t feel like writing or adding my experiences to the world. Even though writing probably could have helped me process things and take the inner turmoil out to wrangle it through tangible words, I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down and write. All I felt like I could handle were the moments right in front of me. Nothing too far in the future - that was too much - just give me the here and now. Call it survival, call it unhealthy, call it whatever you want. Moment to moment and compartmentalizing is how I worked through this past summer and fall. It was too difficult to do it any other way.
In the summer, one day would have all of this in it:
Being at the grocery store and talking to the local hospital where Karolynn passed away.
Calling the lawyer to provide the requested documentation.
Sitting in my car and crying for 10 minutes before driving home.
Getting out of the car and walking into my house to be Mom to my son.
Fielding phone calls from the funeral home to plan Karolynn’s service.
Comforting my husband when he got home.
Plugging into my computer to tie up a few things at work.
Sitting in my master bedroom closet and crying.
Updating my husband, brother-in-law, and father-in-law about the hospital, lawyer, and funeral service and trying to make a plan.
I mean I can just go on and on with how compartmentalized I was. Again, this could be survival or how I process grief or completely unhealthy. What was bizarre through all of this is that I knew how badly I was grieving, I witnessed the severe grief of my husband, my-brother-in-law, and my father-in-law, I was listening to all the people I had to talk to for things to move forward and yet I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience most of the day. I also found myself having fun with my son and feeling incredibly guilty for it. It was so difficult to grieve when I was with my son. He is just so insanely happy ALL the time. My son helped me move through this summer and to have moments of connectedness. With everything else going on, he helped me.
Just like Karolynn and Gus, who filled holes in my heart that I didn’t even know were there… my son fills holes that are completely indescribable.
So in this new year, where I’m trying to maintain the significant changes I’ve made in the past 6 months, this new me with a new perspective on life is actually feeling pretty optimistic about 2025. Much more so than any other year, in fact. People also say that when you are at your lowest, there is nowhere to go but up. So let’s go up with an insane amount of velocity and with a ridiculous amount of dedication. New year, new you.
