A new year

The sky is clear tonight, and the stars are bright. I sat on the swing in my backyard and just looked up at the beauty of the stars - my year-round version of Christmas lights.

It's the start of a new year, which generally means you pause and reflect on the old year. But I don't really want to do that. It's too painful, too raw, too heavy right now. And those reflections will come in their own time - we're getting near the time when the cancer came back last year, where my mom really started to die. Those reflections will be fresh this year in February, March, April. So I'll wait until then to look back at those months.

But instead of reflecting, today I caught myself thinking "what if?" What if my dad had never gotten hurt? What if my mom never had cancer? What if? What if?

And, because I'm a details person, I thought it through. I thought through the what ifs. Would I have spent as much time in San Jose caring for my mom if my dad hadn't had any physical limitations? Would she still have become my best friend? Would I be as close to my dad as I am? Would I have have such a deep friendship with person a, stayed in touch with person b, reconnected with person c? What if? What if?

The short answer: no. No, I probably wouldn't have spent as much time in San Jose, I probably wouldn't have known my mom as my best friend, I probably wouldn't be as close as my dad, or with friends a, b and c. And I wouldn't be who I am today, a woman who has done her work and engaged with her grief and come out the other side, strong and courageous, a beautiful, talented, brilliant, powerful musk ox.

Last year was a hard year. (That's an understatement.) But it was a beautiful year, too. So I will live in that dissonance, and remember the year, in time, with tears of pain and of joy. And in the meantime I look forward to the new year. I hope to find life and joy and good things in 2014. Or at the very least, I hope it's just a little better than 2013.