A New Year

I don't get too excited about the "new" year, don't make a lot of resolutions, don't stay up until midnight to ring it in. For me, it's better to one-day-at-a-time it, waking up each morning with a sense of newness and promise, hopes and objectives. I think it's dangerous to lump 365 days together, call them a year, and deem the whole sum as either "good" or "bad." Things come in waves, cycles, and it usually takes more than the turning of a page on the calendar, to abruptly interrupt that.

There is something to be said, however, for resolving, for taking inventory, for starting over, for having hope, faith, optimism and a can-do attitude. January 1st can be a good time to do that, because there is strength in numbers, there is a swelling and momentum, that can take hold and help move you "out" of wherever you are, and that is the first step.

Our dear friend, Claire Rose, Wil's guardian angel of 11 years, lost her mother on Christmas Eve. Her death was sudden and tragic, and the community is shaken, her family reeling, the sadness reverberates in every direction. I can't wish Claire a happy new year, I can't tell her everything will get easier and better and back to "normal." Her life has been altered forever. What I can tell her is she's not alone. She has a community ready and willing to step up, to not replace, but to substitute for her mother's role in her life. I can tell her that there are any number of people she can grab onto and hold on, until the wave of I-can't-do-this passes. I can tell her that although the year ahead may not be happy, it is not resigned to being terrible, either. It will be hard. It will be different. It will be sad. It will also have moments of piercing grace, love that shines through and sustains her. I can tell her that each morning of this new year, she will have to resolve to make the day anew, lean into the changes, make open her heart to receive all the love we have to give, so that one day she wakes up and the resolve to have resolve doesn't have to be so strong.

For Claire, the "page turned" on the day her mother left her in the physical world, and became a guide from the other side, one that will shepherd her through these dark and difficult days, with a little help from her friends.