Something Old, Something New

Written by RJ on December 31, 2013. Posted in Dating, Discovery, Healing

I don’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about. They know about what they’re saying and we all say those words this time of year every year. What they have no idea about is who they are saying those words to. I’m not claiming to have had the worst year of anyone alive because I’m sure I haven’t. I will say with confidence though, that 2013 was the worst year of my life and I am anxious to have it all behind me.

The birth of a new year is really nothing more than a new number. For most of us, nothing changes much. We all make resolutions and claim that we will somehow modify our behaviors when the clock strikes 12:00. Those resolutions don’t last long and really have nothing to do with a new year. But still, we identify the dawn of a new year as the perfect opportunity to make changes and to create things new and different.

We all know that 2013 brought the deaths of my wife and mother. I also lost an aunt. My mother suffered a catastrophic stroke and although still alive, she was not going to recover and would be living in a vegetative state. It was my job to inform her doctors that she would not want to be kept alive under those circumstances. For the ensuing seven days, she was in a Hospice bed and I watched her die with Coleen and my brother Jim at my side.

Although well into her first year of her Stage 4 diagnosis, Coleen was doing well at that time. She had undergone chemotherapy and was then taking an oral chemo drug. She was tired a lot but completely functional and self-sufficient. I know that those hours she spent with me in my mother’s hospital room were not good for her though. She had to be thinking about her diagnosis and what her future would look like. Coleen was strong for me during the entire ordeal of my mother’s passing. She helped me make the end-of-life decision, supported me emotionally and with her presence. Of course she planned and orchestrated the post funeral service reception we held at our house. Her selection of caterer and food was excellent as always.

Coleen’s condition worsened shortly after that and three months after my mom’s death, I lost her. And I have been on the mend ever since.

2013 was a ridiculously painful year for me and I am happy that it will soon be ending. Some would say it’s time for a new start, but I won’t say that because I have already made a new start. I have already become something new. A lesson to be learned from such loss is to move forward with purpose. A lesson to be unlearned from loss is to spend excessive time in sorrow and sadness. A loss as devastating as a 33-year-old love fest with your soul mate is not easy to rebound from. I expect to never completely recover from that. The wound may heal but there will always be a scar. But if ever somethings good can come from something so bad, I believe in certain ways, it has for me. I believe that I have discovered things I would not have. I believe I know things now that would have remained unknown to me. I have met many wonderful people I would have never known. I have discovered a new ability in myself to communicate and to extrovert myself to people I don’t know. I have released a pent-up creativity that I am still learning about. I have become closer with my children and them with each other. I have learned to let myself happen.

These are all things to come out of a terrible and painful situation. My perfect world pitch is that I would have met with all those fates without losing Coleen. It’s not necessary for me to say that I would trade all those new things for my old life back with her at my side. But I can never have that so it doesn’t matter. What I do have is myself and my newness and my family. I have my new role as patriarch and mentor and grandfather. I have my new friends and my new interests. I have many of my old ways but they have been garnished with new discoveries.

I even made a new friend last night that I would not have otherwise met. We spent several hours over a couple cocktails and never stopped talking. At the end I gave her a real kiss and a Hershey’s kiss wrapped in red foil. I told her I wasn’t sure if she would let me kiss her, so I brought a candy kiss to give her just in case. Something old like flirting, that I miss so much, with someone new.

So you see, even though it was still 2013, I have already started somethings new. In part to dim the past, in part to brighten it. Happy New Year, 2014. Let’s get it on.

Trackback from your site.