New Year, Same Old Life

Making resolutions is The Thing To Do this time of year. I usually make them, and I often read blogs where people have made them. It is the resolving time of year, I suppose. And I have the personality for resolutions because I constantly have angst over everything.

But I don’t feel inclined to make resolutions this year.

On New Year’s Eve, we rang in 2010 with a handful of dear friends. After midnight, Si became serious and took time to thank these friends for walking with us during June of this year. I don’t think he even knew what to say. What really can be said, except for expressions of gratitude?

Of course, we have many more people to thank than this bunch, but we must start somewhere, mustn’t we?

Si invited everyone to reflect on their year in general, and I found myself speechless. What could I say? Or, more aptly, what could I say, without crying in the middle of a party?

The reason I am forgoing resolutions this year is, oddly enough, tied to June 7th. Si had been in the hospital for a couple of days. His kidneys had failed, his liver was starting to fail also, and I knew that he was beginning to lose his mental clarity {temporarily, thank the Lord}. I also anticipated that he would begin to swell. So, I had to take home his wedding ring.

He had become very childlike over the couple of days preceding this event, and he seemed to regard this as a form of betrayal. I tried my best to explain that if he kept it on and his fingers swelled badly, the hospital would be forced to cut it off, and I didn’t think it could ever be repaired.

He grudgingly complied.

I wore it on my finger when taking it home (his mother stayed at the hospital that night, and that was the last time I saw him awake and alert for over a week), and I toyed with the idea of wearing it until he was better, but I was fearful I would lose it. I was also terrified I’d never have the chance to put it back on him.

So I put it in a small jewelry box and hid it in the back of one of my drawers and prayed this wasn’t a sign of things to come.

For weeks, I couldn’t return the ring. Every night I came home and checked on it and made sure it was still there. I knew that everything that mattered to me was hanging in the balance. Having his ring at home was a constant, haunting reminder.

And then God worked his miracles, and Si got better. In fact, he got better faster than any of us had ever thought possible.

And here am I in my same old life.

So, I resolve nothing. Absolutely nothing.

For once in my life, I want everything to just be the way that it is. Someday, probably next New Year, I’ll be ready to work on improving the forgotten closets of my life. But in 2010, I want nothing more than exactly what I have: my same old life.