Happy New Year

I've always found Halloween to be an entertaining holiday. It's an excuse holiday, like Valentine's day. It's about buying candy and dressing up funny and fueling the US economy. That is the only modern purpose to be given to Halloween. Not very meaningful or significant is it? But that's alright. The origins of our modern Hallow's Eve traditions are descended largely from the pagan/pre-Christian religions. In Celtic paganism, Halloween is often known as Samhain. Samhain (November in Gaelic) was meant to celebrate the end of the growing and harvesting seasons, and the slumber of winter that would bring rebirth and growth the following Spring. It was the ancient Celtic New Year's eve. This idea resonates with me. I feel like I'll never be able to celebrate January First again. Never will it be a light-hearted day for me, nor a festival of renewal. But it makes sense to celebrate the beginning of a new year right after the fall harvest, I think. Better weather, anyway. It was also a holiday meant to honor those friends and loved ones who had passed away. Places were often set for them at the table, and stories about them were shared to keep their memory alive for those who live on.

So, from now on, I will be celebrating my New Year on the Pagan holiday of Samhain. As such... here are my New Years resolutions:

• I resolve that while I may sometimes have a right to be angry, I don't have the right to be mean. I have been far to judgmental and critical of people I've been unhappy with. Taking out my unhappiness on other people and their reputations no longer reflects who I am or who I want to be.
• I resolve that I will not take the easy out. Every lesson I've learned that mattered and every good habit I have were learned the hard way. The easy road is for pussies. (Pardon the language, Kim).
• I resolve to be more patient. Life happens on it's own schedule. Once you accept that now can be just as enjoyable as later and that later never matters more than now, life get's a lot more fun and a lot more easy.
• I resolve to be more grateful and more forgiving. I've always been able to forgive others, but I have a hard time forgiving myself. However (to quote Aldous Huxley), rolling around in the muck is not the best way of getting clean. Regarding gratitude, it's hard to pay attention to what you lack when you pay a lot of attention to what you have.

So, my dear friends, Happy New Year. I hope the coming year is better for all of us. I love you all, and I sincerely thank you for standing by me these past ten months. If you feel that January First will be difficult for you too, please feel free to join in with me in forming a new tradition. Anyone else have a New Year's resolution?

Blessed Be and love to all.

Tamsen

Life After Death

Well, October's almost over, Halloween will be here soon. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas. November first will be ten months. TEN MONTHS. How in the hell can it be ten months? I wonder if I'll be asking that questions years from now. Five years? How can it be five years?!? There was a movie I saw once as a kid, I think it was called Hello Again, with Shelly Long. Anyway, she dies very early in the movie (by choking on a chicken ball). Her sister owns an occult shop and is heavy into the "magical arts", shall we say. So, it shows time passing, her family adjusting to her death as the days and weeks pass by. Then in one scene the sister finds this ancient spell book that has a spell for bringing a person back from the dead, on the full moon if it's the one year anniversary of the person's death. So she brings her back, and wacky hi-jinks ensue. But the thing that strikes me lately are those scenes of her son, jerk-off husband and sister adapting to their newfound circumstances. When she comes back, her husband has married the ex-best friend, her son is newly married with a baby on the way and a new career. Their house has been sold and the husband/best friend live in a high-rise NY flat. Everything has changed, all the people she loved are different.

I wonder, if CJ were to miraculously come back this coming New Year's eve, what he'd make of it all. I have a new car. I've moved. I bought two pairs of skis. I got a puppy. But those are just material changes. I wonder, have we changed? I think so. I can't speak for the rest of you, but I feel like a different person. I'm not afraid of death or injury anymore. I'm not afraid of failing or looking stupid. I don't take my career goals, money or my possessions as seriously, and I don't take the people I love for granted. I figured out that life is not about doing. It's about what you're being while you're doing. It doesn't matter what I do anymore, it just matters if I'm happy while I'm doing it. I've lost some friends and gained others. I've gotten new hobbies, interests I never would have had the guts to explore while CJ was here. I've learned that contrary to popular belief I can be alone in this life and still be happy. I've learned that I'm a lot stronger than I ever gave myself credit for.

One of the most prominent questions on the mind of every widower is, When does it get better? This is, of course, assuming that they have an answer to Does it get better?. Grief takes its toll, and grief takes its time. The one thing, more than any other, that you "normal" people need to realize is that life is changed. We are not the same people we were before. We will never be the same, and our lives will never "go back" to normal. We have to make up a new normal. If you are sitting around, waiting until the "old" us comes back again, you're wasting your time. The old us is never coming back, just like our spouses are never coming back. What you're doing, if you're a good friend that is, is waiting for us to decide who we are now.

So, you want to know when it gets better? It gets better when you make the transition. This is the pivotal moment when you stand on the breach between the old and the new, the familiar and the unknown. You've walked all these lonely miles, and you stand on the precipice. Behind you is that dark scary forest you've been calling home for months now. In there, you're alone and you're afraid. But you've spent enough time there that you have a familiarity with the area. You know all the monsters that play in 'dem 'dere woods. The danger, you see, is that we've become comfortable with our grief. We had a role, as a spouse. We were a husband, a wife, a lover, the guy who lifted heavy stuff and fixed things, the nag... whatever. Now we've become "the widow/er". We're still being defined by our spouses, but in a different way. People now identify us by our grief, our isolation, all that pain that "they can't imagine what we're going through."

I believe things get better when you start to redefine yourself. You recognize the loss, and it's weight, but you begin to make stakes to reclaim your life. It's the point when you say, this event will no longer define who I am. Did I mention that I bought new skis? (Summit Nomads, aw yeah =). I LOVE to ski. But I've never done it very much because CJ didn't like the cold too well. So we did other things instead. But this season, I'm going to be a skiing fool! And I'm really excited about the prospect. I have to deal with the pain, though. You see, it hurts to take those steps. These new things in our lives that don't involve our spouse. It hurts because you're actively letting go, you're acknowledging that you want to move on someday. You're acknowledging that you're still here, hanging on, alive. And you're acknowledging that they are not. That's a very painful choice.

But still, slowly you let go of the pain without losing the love. You learn new habits, make new ties, get new hobbies, but retain the memories. So... tell me. Do you believe in life after death? I do. I'm proof.

Blessed be,
Tamsen