So This Is The New Year

I'm glad to say that I've gotten past the part where I hate everyone and everything... for the most part. I've never been one to summarily dismiss an entire year as bad, or unlucky, or vexed. It's not the calendar's fault. 2011 had no ill will towards me. It's us that lump time and experiences together. That being said the resetting of the annual clock, as we start another trip around the sun and the earth tips back and forth, seems like as good a time as any to start moving ahead. But like Jenny said in her last post, there's new meaning in this year. 2012 is the first year without him. I don't know how to feel about that... except affected. It now is what it is and we can choose to attach meaning to this year or not.

I've been searching these past 8+ months to understand what's "normal" for someone in our position. At last I've realized there isn't such a thing. I can only do what feels fair and healthy for myself. I'm finding myself talking about him less with people, especially family- the people that matter. This doesn't feel right. And neither does talking about him arbitrarily just cause I feel like I "should." I can see now how families just don't talk about someone they've lost. There's never a good time.

I do feel like I need to put up some pictures of him. I need to face this loss more often. It's easy, especially for me, to make myself extremely busy. I do enjoy my hobbies, and it's certainly a better approach than doing nothing and being depressed, but they are distractions from being left alone with these thoughts. I need to face this more. I want to see his face more. Next step: summon the courage to frame my favorite photos of him. I need to learn to live with him as a memory instead of what he is now... a missing person.

But that much is sure.... I miss him.

I really, really miss him.

- Craig

2012

Hard to believe Dad never made it to see this year. I remember when I was little, we would talk about how far away the year 2000 was and what life would be like then. I remember him saying that I would be pushing him around in a wheelchair at the turn of the century. It seemed so far away and so unreal, and he would be so old and I would be so in my 20's...? I never forgot that conversation. I think he was as clueless and as fascinated and as scared as I was to try to see into the future. I had no idea where my life would lead me and 26 years old seemed so grown up. I think he was scared to think of me, his oldest daughter, as grown up and scared to think of what that meant for him.

Now I wonder what life will be like without him. I thought ringing in the new year would lift a weight off of my shoulders since 2011 was so tough. But it seems to have done the opposite. At least in 2011 I had my dad for a short while. In 2012, I never will.

It still all seems so surreal at times and I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that he's really gone. He was bigger than life and such a strong presence that I kind of expected the world to stop spinning so fast or the sun to shine a little less, or gravity to give up it's hold on us if he wasn't around. He was part of things. How can he just be gone?

Jen