2020 is the year that ended me. I’ve felt confused, scared, lonely, isolated, anxious, shamed for going out, shamed for staying in. My kids have been in school, out of school, and every version in between. We’ve cancelled trips, family gatherings, church, and restaurants. Political division, racial tensions, pandemic confusion. And that was the easy part. I also buried my son. I have every reason to join the world with a raised middle finger to 2020 as we cross over to 2021. I hope to never experience pain so horrific ever again.

And yet. I find myself wanting to stay here, in this mess of a year that brought unimaginable pain, because its the last year he was in. The last year that will have memories associated with him. The last summer at the lake, last birthday, last meal cooked for him, last time I kissed him goodnight, and the last time I rubbed his back awake. How do I leave that all behind? I don’t know how to step into a year that won’t have one single new memory of him.

I’m not ok even though I’m ok. 2020 taught me that joy and grief can coexist. That I can beg for my own death in the same breath that I pray for life. It taught me grace and rage. It taught me an existence with one foot on Earth and one foot in eternity and that no one dies before their time. Its the last year I will ever have with my beautiful boy in his body. He is Home and its impossible to imagine beginning a new year, continuing a lifetime without him physically here.

In the middle of a good closet cry, a friend texts:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43:18-19

It’s not easy but its there….a new beginning. Not formed by the abandonment of the past, but from the shards of it. 2021 doesn’t change 2020 (or every year before). My past is still real, still filled with love, still valid.

I can’t say happy. Just….New Year.