Auld Lang Syne

The kids and I made it through Christmas. We made it with plenty of crying and “aren’t we just the saddest bunch,” and gifts that had more meaning this year than any other. We made it with invites for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, outfits that had some sparkle, and a toddler and a baby that brought the sparkle just by walking in the room.

But New Year’s……

I dreaded New Year’s Eve more than anything else in December. Well wishes said with the best of intentions made me physically flinch. Is an entire year really supposed to be happy? Who ever has that happen to them? This new year represents twelve, long months without Mark and that seems too harsh to reflect on for more than a fleeting moment.

The last day of the year was spent on the phone trying to straighten out my health insurance. This is so routine now that it rarely leaves my checklist of post-death crappy problems. Just when my insurance got straightened out in 2018, the dawn of a new year brought a host of new problems, new phone calls, new departments to be transferred to for help and no definitive answers.

The business side of death threatens to do me in at every turn. Bearing the oppressive weight of loss, the mundane feels unbearable as I brace myself to tell another stranger “my husband died in September” when most days I don’t believe it myself.

In late spring Mark was writing a grant. Those grant writing times consumed him. Chances of getting a federal research grant seem slightly better than winning the Powerball but not by much. Nevertheless, he poured all his energy into it like every other one he wrote. Because of the timing of the due date on that one, he never planted his vegetable garden. Sometimes I look back at that and wonder if that’s when things started to go south. Was not being able to garden and watch lettuce and tomatoes grow a precursor for giving up? Then I think that if he were here and I told him that he would say I was crazy and that would be true these days. I often feel like I’m tipping over to crazy.

When I was done trying to get my insurance problems solved, I checked my email. Mark’s department head who was new to the job in July, and like everyone he worked with has had to deal with her own grief over his death, wanted me to know that the last grant Mark ever wrote was approved.

The work in his lab goes on and I whispered “you did it, buddy, you did it” and rang in the new year with heaving sobs.