december reflections

I wish I saw more 3ams. 

When the world is asleep and no one expects anything out of you. No one is waiting on an email or a text or a phone call. There are no kids to feed. The chores would be too loud and disrupting to the sleeping boys. And so I can just lay here, staring at the ceiling and thinking my own thoughts. 

I have so much to talk about but all I’ve been doing this week is talking. No reflection; no peace. No insights. No healing. Just survival mode. 

Shaking hands at a funeral for the 4th time this year. My first 4 times. 

Closing on the house and prepping it for moving in. 

Seeing all my belongings strewn about and taken apart and disorganized; painfully different than how Pete would’ve handled it. 

A special week with my in-laws, one that solidified that I have wonderful sisters with incredible, generous, supportive family who have been unspeakably welcoming and loving. 

People kept mentioning my writing. It is strange being seen. Weird and hard, too. But… good. 

I hate that I go so long between posting, but my life is such chaos I haven’t been able to get into a routine yet. In my new house, I know I will. I can see my desk and the view and the dark of the early mornings I will spend writing once I have some calm and peace. 

I am working very hard not to let anything steal my peace. This house stuff is so stressful. But I’m the one who chooses whether it stresses me out or teaches me a lesson and life is too short to pout about shit being hard sometimes. 

I enjoyed this mass the most. It felt special. Knowing Barb was able to plan it and prepare for it, knowing how sacred her time in church was. Her faith was so, so strong. She never missed church, no matter where we were. Vacations, family visits around New England… she would find the local Catholic Church and attend mass on Sundays. And not once did she pressure to join, just announce she was going and ask once if you’d like to go. I regret a bit that I never took her up on it. But my complete lack of experience and knowledge with the Catholic Church makes attending services so awkward. I hate to seem disrespectful by not saying the prayers, not taking communion, or not really participating in anything… but it also feels disrespectful to do those things just to fit in. I was not raised in a church or with religion. I barely know the story of Jesus. I know almost nothing about anything in the Bible. So it’s always been strange for me to be around people who revolve their life around God- someone I’ve never met or been introduced to. 

But being in the church this time for Barb felt like an honor. I even tried to stumble my way through the Lord’s Prayer and got maybe every 3rd word. I tried to make her proud. I was always so stressed about making her proud. I know how much she loved Pete, her eldest and only boy, and how much he held her at arms length.  He loved his mother dearly, but he tended to keep a bit of distance between himself and his family. Much like myself; which is how we both ended up in Boston becoming our own family. But as it turns out, I needed both our families more than I ever realized. My boys do too. I don’t want space from anyone I love anymore. I cram my days with interactions and experiences that exhaust me, but make my life worth it. 

Even on bad, hard days there is good coffee and a happy baby and a hilarious kindergartener and a roof over our heads and the resources to live comfortably. I refuse to waste much time feeling down when I have everything that I do. 

Everyone speaks of 2022 as the worst year, but I won’t call it that. It has been the most transformative of my life. The most memorable. The year prior was the best, but this one was the one that lit up the rest of my life path for me.