A beautiful year

I had initially started a different post about my kids; how they love each other, despite their fussing and nagging and fighting, yet when  went through the Facebook posts this morning, I was amazed at so many “A new beginning!”  “Thank God 2012 is over!”  “I’m glad I got through 2012!”  Wait, what??

No. 

Folks, time is a human thing.  The kids and I spent a good half hour discussing that very topic last night at 12:45, when all of us (including the dog) were in my full size bed.  I brought up that now in the bed (12:46 a.m., January 1, 2013) was really no different than then (11:59 p.m., December 31, 2012), when Ethan and I were yelling the countdown and giggling that Maggie took that opportunity to go for a pee and was missing the “bridge” into the “new year”.  It turn out she wanted to call my cell from the house phone at 12:00 to wish me a happy new year & be my first phone call of the new year. 

Time is relative.  It is not absolute or complete.  I have heard more times than I care to remember that I can start my day over anytime I choose.  Granted, we can’t “technically” be in whichever year we’d like, or I’d be in 1988, I think.  Sigh…the 80s were amazing…all those rad hairbands.

Back to the point:  Last year was beautiful – they are all beautiful years, if you choose to make them so. Certain events are difficult, guaranteed, but we live through them, we learn, and most importantly, we grow. One of the sayings my mother repeated far too much was “Life isn’t fair”, and it isn’t!  There is no way we can expect life to be the way it is in a movie.  As a living, conscious Being, we are subject to births and deaths,  tragedies and joyous occasions, happiness and sorrow, along with all those other things which make Life what it is: an Experience.

On our way home last night, in the final hours of 2012, my son and I (Mags was asleep in the car) decided to stop by the river where we had said goodbye to baby Ryan’s ashes the year before.  It was icy cold outside; 29 degrees and so motionless.  The river was moving gently, as if she, too, was chilled and a flock of geese slept huddled by the shore.  Ethan and I saw a quiet mist hugging the water, trying to blanket the river, yet the water rushed hurriedly on, trying to get downstream to a warmer place.  The once-full moon looked mournfully over our shoulders, giving us light to say ‘hi’ to Ryan, and so we did. 

Once we were in the car again, Ethan asked where the river ended up, if it went as far as the ocean.  He wanted to know if Ryan’s ashes were in the Pacific.  Talking in that warm car as we headed home those last hours of 2012, it was a beautiful conversation about Life.  Yes, my heart hurts sometimes, because I missed out in the birth & life of Ryan or because my father is no longer here.  Yet others are here, right now in this beautiful Life. So while they are here, while I am here, let us all Live.