ON NEW YEAR’S EVE I was in my office downstairs catching up on a few things when for whatever reason I looked over at the tree just in time to see the cat go running up it and bring the whole thing crashing down. The damn thing exploded upon impact. Ornaments shattered and decorations flew. It was a mess. I just shook my head and thought it was so fucking symbolic of the past year.
I kept that New Year’s pretty low-key. Denise came by and we hung out at the house with the girls. I grilled some steaks, opened a bottle of wine, and we all had a nice dinner. After dinner, we just watched TV and played games and waited for the ball to drop in New York. I was so looking forward to starting a new year, it’s beyond expression. I know it’s just a state of mind, but there’s a lot to be said for the impact of perspective. Turning that calendar was going to be monumental for me. A lot of people use New Year’s Eve as a reflection day to kind of go over the year past, but not me. I was using it as more of a springboard.
It felt good to have Denise there, but like everything else that year with her, it was a yin-yang thing as it felt just as awkward without Gina. Maybe I was caught up in all of the “It’s A Wonderful Life” of it all, but I was really missing her. Regardless of all we went through, drifting closer together and further apart, she was my wife of fourteen years. She was my rock, my backbone, my staunchest supporter, and even though she was gone she was very much on my mind. I was happy to have Denise, don’t get me wrong, but she was on my arm and in my head…not in my heart. That spot was still very much taken by Gina and try as I might, I couldn’t push her out of it.
When the clock struck midnight, she was very much on my mind. As we were counting down, and I know how crazy this sounds, but it was almost like I was counting down to her death again; only this time I was counting down to moving on. Maybe a better analogy is it was like selling an old car. You look forward to getting a new car and getting rid of the old one, but when the time comes to hand over the keys to the new owner once you’ve sold it, you get that tinge of finality. That’s what this was for me. A big tinge of finality as I left the year that I lost my wife behind me.
Denise and I shared the traditional New Year’s kiss but it was odd. How could it not be? Have you ever tried kissing one woman while missing someone else? It isn’t easy. She spent the night and that was a little weird. It was supposed to be a new beginning but as we lay in bed, all I could think about was what I was going to do with my New Year. You’re supposed to have goals or resolutions and yet, even with everything I had been through last year, I had none.
Normally I would have set goals for the New Year, but this year I was just happy to see the last one end. I was still getting my feet back underneath me and to be honest, I felt like a guy on a boat in the middle of the ocean. I was just sitting on top of the water and bobbing with every wave that passed underneath. While I was eagerly anticipating the New Year, I didn’t think much past it. Little did I know a big wave was just beyond that calendar-turning day.