a new year

I’m glad to be blogging on a new site.  This new site is still a work-in-progress in regard to its configuration, but I wanted to get it up and running, as to not lose my motivation.  Truthfully, Like Olive Shoots has become, to me, similar to all of Reece’s things…sacred and somewhat untouchable.  I want it preserved the way that it looked last year.  I don’t want to add anything further to it or change things around.  I’ve realized over the last month that I needed a different site if I wanted to keep writing.  Tonight’s post will be a short one, to get the ball rolling.

We made it through Christmas and Terry and I looked at each other and said, “We have to do this again?”  The whole season felt overwhelming and took quite a bit of energy to wade through without Reece.  We actually had a nice, quiet holiday season (by design), but the holidays are exhausting even without the grief aspect and avoiding much of the season, as it turns out, takes a great deal of energy as well. The celebration piece of Christmas was low-key–we avoided malls, parties, baking, and most social situations.  It is a season of perpetual merry-making and conversing.  Small talk either requires we lie to people or bring them into the heaviness of the year…neither is enjoyable.  We decided to not put ourselves or others in those types of conversations, at least for this year.  While there is no way to know how I will feel years down the road, I get this feeling that right now–when the kids’ ages are still in the appropriate “order”, when Reece hasn’t been gone for very long–it will be easier than another 5, 10, 20 years down the road.

A year ago we were thinking that we would be vacationing someplace warm this January to celebrate a year of new blood for Reece.  We were marching forward with little option of turning around or changing our minds on anything.  We were beginning the process of grieving Reece; he was so different during his transplant.  And while I’m sure this isn’t exactly the way that people want to start their year, as we approach anniversaries and the triggers of the time of year–the cold, the date, the approaching birthdays–it makes me want to crawl in a hole.  I don’t think it would be wrong to do so.  And I definitely don’t think there is a right or wrong way to feel in regard to grief over a child (or any loved one, for that matter).  Anyway, I’m going to try my best to re-program my brain to avoid constantly comparing this year to last year.  I’m not big on “anniversaries” and I could spend six months in perpetual anniversary-mode.  We are charging forward into 2013.  My Facebook status last January read, “2012, I’m not sure how I feel about you.”  I guess my status for this year could be something like, “2013, at least you aren’t 2012.”