Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Bittersweet 2008

Wow, what a year!
A very messed up 2008. Totally not anything I wanted for me.
I have said it many times, but 2008 was the best and worst year of my life.
I got married and was the happiest wife ever.
We had a wonderful wedding; we were having a wonderful married life.
We were on top of the world.
We had great friends all around us and a great family supporting us.
We had plans for small things and big things and every size in between.
We were enjoying 2008 so much.

And then it all came to a screeching halt on one dark August morning.
Including my life as I knew it.
Roger's life completely.
Our plans.
Our marriage.
Everything was gone.
In a blink of an eye.
Just like the cliche, in a flash, everything changed.

I remember last New Years Eve.
We were so excited.
Our wedding was only a matter of weeks away.
Everyone had got our invitation.
Family and friends were excited.
We talked about it a lot.
Roger had just graduated.
2008 was going to be the best year ever.

And yet here I am today.
And I wish I were more predictable. I wish I knew myself a little better to know how I would be reacting now.
I thought I knew me. But I do not know grief and me.
I kept thinking in the weeks before today that I would be happy to be standing at the last day of 2008. To be staring at the start of a new year. To escape 2008.
Of all the holidays, today would be the best one of them all.
Yeah... sadly, not happening. My mood is not what I expected.
I was a little excited about today before.
Tonight offered me a new year.
A fresh start.
And I am still feel that way in parts of my mind.

But then...
I started thinking/realizing.
At midnight tonight, Roger will not be here with me.
He will not be part of 2009 at all.
He will not see the happenings of 2009.
He will have no idea what 2009 is like.
2009 will be completely Roger-free.
I will be starting a new year off alone without him.
And I do not like it one bit.
And at 11:59, 2008 is over.
The last year Roger was here and a part of will be gone.
It means time is passing.
It means I have to cross over the threshold of 2008/2009 alone.
I will soon be in a year Roger has never seen without him.
2008 is leaving me.
Gone forever.

I feel further and further away from him.
And I just do not like it.
I do not like it one bit.

I want to go back.
I want to do 2008 again.
To have that excitement.
To think I would never be single again.
To think I was about to embark on the best year of my life.

Yet, not me.
Not I.
I am here and terribly single.
Starting a new year without him.
Starting a new life without him.
And as a massage therapist said to me today, a brand spanking new Star as of midnight even if I go into 2009 kicking and screaming against my will.

1 comment:

Katherine said...

As a fellow widow, just wanted to let you know that your feelings about starting the new year without your dear husband were very normal. My husband died in 2006, and that New Years was horrible for me. I hadn't expected it--I thought Christmas would be much harder than New Years-- but, that New Years Eve night, I was in tears realizing that the last year in which Don had been with me was ending, and that I was starting a new year--a year in which he wouldn't exist at all--without him. So I totally know where you are coming from.

Subsequent New Years haven't been any picnic, but still have been easier than that first one. . .