New Year 2016

Today would be my dad's 79th birthday.  

Today is the first New Years Day that I can ever remember when I didn't see my dad, or at the very least, make a phone call.  New Years has always been an important day in my life.  It was also my grandma's birthday (my dad's mom).  It's just always been more than just a holiday in my life.  

Today has been odd.

I had originally planned to go to the cemetery, but we're on day 19 of a miserable cold in our house and I was up again most of the night with a coughing kid.  I feel like a mom with a newborn and driving a car doesn't even feel safe right now.  I'm tired and run down and raw.  So I stayed home.  

This cold has allowed me to have a distraction over Christmas and now New Years.  But the reality of all of it has settled in today.  

Having said that...It's a new year.  A fresh slate laid out in front of me.  I'm ready to move forward.  My parents would not, in any way, want me to stop my life.  That doesn't mean I don't grieve.  It means I grieve when I need to grieve and then I keep moving forward.  I have ideas for this year.  Of course, I know well enough now that "plans" are simply "plans".  I have no control over where life takes me.  I only have control over how I handle what life throws my way.  

Right now, I am exhausted and ready for this cold to leave my home.  But...I have no control over that.  I have to ride it out.  Which means putting my new years plans on the back burner until we're all healthy again.  It's making me frustrated.  And in the dark, in the middle of the night, I don't think clearly.  And my brain LOVES to tell me stories.  And right now, I'm simply doing the best I can.  

What I know is that 2015 did a number on me.  And I feel the weight of the past six months.  But what I also know is that every day, I still get up and move forward.  And that's progress.  

But I'd really like the universe to back off just a bit.  I need some breathing room.  I need my family (and myself) to be healthy.  I don't know how much longer I can go at this pace.  And I'm not afraid to admit it.  I'm not a robot.  I'm human.  A human who is grieving.  And exhausted.  And who really needs a break.

Maybe that break will come tonight.  Maybe not.  

But come tomorrow, I will have survived my first holiday season without both my parents.  And I will have survived dad's first birthday without him.  That's something.  

And then I'll take another step.  In search of that break.