New Year’s Goals After an Unraveling Year

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.  But I do do New Year’s goals.

(*snort* do do.)

(Hey, I know this post is gonna get heavy, so I’m getting my humor where I can.)

It’s been a decade-long tradition: each year, I would write up a little summary of the year that had transpired, followed by a list of goals I’d hope to accomplish in the new one.  I’d then look back on what I wrote the previous year and see what I could check off from that list.

It’s a pretty harmless tradition, usually.  There were a few years in the earlier days where “lose 5 pounds” somehow made it onto the list.  One year, my write up turned into an excuse to rant about my terrible job.  But, for the most part, it’s been a way to keep focused, keep perspective, and keep going.

And then 2015 happened.

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A Need for Christmas Spirit (Part 2)

(For Part One)

It’s 2014.  I’m in tears in my parents’ kitchen.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, there’s a part of me that can’t help but laugh: most traumatic Thanksgiving ever, and no one is even arguing.

For a few brief moments, I allow myself exactly the level of sorrow that had been building up all night.  A new and different and bewildering sadness, something that hit the core and drew out large pendulous teardrops as it retreated back.

My husband walks in and draws me in for a hug and I collapse where I’m standing.  I only half-heartedly attempt to pull it together when my mom steps into the kitchen; I’m banking on the fact that she’s notoriously unaware of her surroundings.  But even then, she picks up on what’s going on.

“It’s hard.  I know,” she says, looking over into the family room where he sits.  A figure I can’t even pretend to recognize anymore.  A sign of what’s to come.

When the night is over and I’m in my car, I sit with my eyes fixed on the windshield.

“I think that was my dad’s last Thanksgiving,” I say after a moment.