Scenes from a new year

I had a really great time on new year's eve, despite myself! I was in the company of really cool people, dining outside under a beautifully decorated tent ... A delightfully cool evening, I learned the benefits of being in the presence of a well created Lord Rumson firepit. It's unique & specific design causes the heat to expand outwards therefore covering a larger area of well dispersed heat.

But the real joy began once I got back home around 12.30am.
The blue moon was rising in the cloudless sky.



The children were with friends. My tea was hot. The fire was inside was gorgeous.
Our home has a very special, wonderful feel at this time of year. Many was the night that I would sit in front of the fire when everyone was asleep. Just staring. Trying not to think. Losing myself in the dancing, tangerine flames.

Recapping the evening, I was surprised not to have been bothered going to the party alone (as in unaccompanied, as in no Vic). As I was driving down the dark, dirt road, I reached a dead end. Right in the middle of no where. On a gravelly road. Not even in the Jeep.

Oh, Vic was loving this. "How would Karen extricate herself from this situation?"

Yep. Lost. Totally. Instead of freaking out, I kind of laughed.

"I'm on an adventure" I thought. Actually, it was more how I felt.

Can you feel like you are on an adventure? That is what this feels like. Life after Vic.




As I sat on the patio, I not only looked back upon the year, but upon the decades that have passed. How I have acknowledged this annual "event" - from a child in Switzerland, to being married to the starter husband, practically ignoring every holiday as was his family way, then to Vic & our first Christmas & New Year together in Ft. Lauderdale.

The key to grieving is to look back without regret. Never to use the words "would", "could", "should". As I sat alone on oure deck on new year's eve, I felt oddly fulfilled & happy just as I was. Scared? For sure. But in an excited kind of way. Really, really weird. Not at all what I had expected.

Certainly not the grief model upon which I was raised ... 'Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt & Grief' ... Sunday grave crawls, a requirement.

Instead, I focus on the here & now. Of being present. Very present.

Maybe it is a form of escape.

Maybe.

But it works for me.