New Year's resolutions
I used to make standard New Year's resolutions, but I haven't for the last few years. It seemed that just surviving the year was enough of a goal and there wasn't a need to add any more to that. That is still my primary goal: Make it through another year without Lev. Just the thought of it seems infeasible. But I know I will make it, as I have the last few. Time just passes, and stopping to think about it is often a bad idea. Celebrating, as in birthdays, New Year's, etc. has definitely lost its luster. It is something we do because people expect us to, and we try to eek out any joy that may be there. I have this whole half life looming ahead of me (if I'm lucky to live that long), and the whole half life will be as a grieving parent. Sometimes that seems completely overwhelming and it makes me feel like hyperventilating and at other times I can imagine myself handling it with the inner peace of a lifelong yogi. Many others have done it before me, and I'm sure it was hard on all of them.
To quote Charles Dickens, "And can it be, that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up."
(His daughter Dora died suddenly, one of ten children.)
I already fulfilled my first goal of the year, and it was to make crepes without looking up my standard recipe. I just threw it together, Ricardo style, and they were excellent. And, by 10am on January 1st I had completed my resolution. Then, Jaal gave me the idea of adding other standard recipes so that I could make bread, cakes, brownies, scones, biscuits, pie crust, etc. without a recipe, Don style, as we call it. So, alas the resolution/goal continues. I haven't baked anything else, so unless I want weight gain to be a goal I'll need to go slowly on this one.
My next goal is to learn to play ukelele. I have started and stopped this goal for the last three years. It makes me incredibly sad to play, since it was Lev's favorite instrument. Yet, I want to learn. I am pretty bad at stringed instruments, and in general have minimal musical sense. But I can learn an instrument as one achieves any other task. It's okay if I am never great or intuitive about it. I could play the flute, but couldn't pick out Mary Had a Little Lamb, for example. I have played a little bit every day since the 1st, and we will see how long it continues. I give myself a permanent pass on all goals if they just make me too depressed. I always go back to the primary goal - survival - so if I pick a secondary goal that makes me want to walk in front of a bus I need to back up, scratch the goal, and just eat some cookies.
This brings me to my next goal, which I'm not sure that I am able or willing to go through with. I think I would like to spend more time writing about missing Lev. I feel that I have something to share. I think it lightens my load a bit to write it. And, I think there are other parents out there that have lost a child and then had another one and are as alone as we are in our situation. (I would call it a journey, but Tony despises the use of journey in this circumstance. He says it was written by people that have obviously never travelled or done any fun journeys in their life. This is not a journey, it's just our F***ing life.)
I usually write why my heart has been bubbling over, aching, for days and I don't know what to do to stop it. So, I write and think, and ponder, and release a bit of the toxic grief that builds up in my system. Or sometimes I just cry, and that can work too.
So, would writing be good for me? Good for others? I'm not sure, but I think I will try. I may or may not choose to keep sending it to the blog.
We spent almost two weeks in Puerto Rico, in the same town we lived in in 2000-2001, when Lev was 5 and Jaal was 8. It was great to spend lots of time with our friends John and Jeana who are living there now. We even learned a little more about Lev from their daughter, Roz, which is always heart-warming. I want to keep being a parent to Lev and with nothing new happening it's depressing. So, hearing new things lift my heart a bit, even if they aren't all good, or involve getting into too much sangria at my 40th birthday party. Being with good friends that aren't afraid to talk about Lev repeatedly at random moments, and being somewhere filled with so many good memories was actually quite nice. Tony found it depressing, all those memories with no future, but I found it somehow reassuring. It reminded me of all the wonderful things we did for Lev to make his life special. Even though his kindergarten teacher was mean and liked to come up with punishments that would quickly get her fired in any of the 50 states, we all had a fabulous year. Nothing like living on the beach in stereo-typical paradise to make everything good.
I need to stop writing now if I want ten minutes to play ukelele before Liana wakes up.
