New Years Eve 2015

"Whether we want them or not, 

the New Year will bring new challenges; 

whether we seize them or not, the New 

Year will bring opportunities."

Michael Josephson

Dear Lloyd,

Another New Year without you in it.  As I sit alone this New Years Eve, I realize it seems as if our time together was a dream from years and years ago and yet just yesterday.  Is it truly possibly that this will be my second year without your loving presence?  

I think of the differences a year has wrought:  pain remains, but not so piercing or pervasive as acceptance has doggedly nudged denial aside. Life it seems bubbles to the surface. I don't think one could live for long with the pain so sharp and rending.  I try to remain glad for what we had and to fend off bitterness about what was not to be, what will never, ever be.  And I know that you would know that I cannot stay here, that I must move forward.  I must open myself to possibilities. Unlike my cousin's husband who made her promise never to remarry or to have a relationship, I know you would want me to move forward, to be happy.  Unlike my cousin, I could never, would never, have made such a promise.  Does this, I wonder, mean I loved you less?  I think not, but how does one judge or compare emotions?  Still, despite the fact I know you would want me to have another relationship if it should present itself and be loving, it feels a betrayal somehow.

Whether or not future  happiness involves another man, I do not know though I start to wonder about it at times. I do know it is not dependent upon it.  I realize that I  have very mixed feelings about becoming involved again.  I question if I could ever again commit to someone the way I did to you, lay myself wide open, vulnerable, belly open to evisceration. Still  I miss having someone that I can completely trust, to whom I can relay every thought, every emotion, even those that, while human, make me look small and petty, even in my own eyes.  I miss having someone with whom to share life's experiences for sharing makes them richer somehow. And I miss being held and the feeling of safety that I had in your arms.  And I particularly miss caring for someone, doing those things that bring them pleasure and light their eyes in that special way.

I question if the opportunity to even make this decision on a relationship will ever present itself to me.  Statistics tell me that most widows never remarry.  I was never breathtakingly beautiful, exceptionally charming, unusually intelligent:  I was and am just me, a rather plain, ordinary woman rendered more plain and more ordinary by the years that have passed and the sun that has battered me on long bicycle rides.  Are only those genetically blessed deserving of being cherished?  Sometimes it seems that way, at least on the outside; but I am old enough to know that looks can deceive.

 I think of how someone in the past year was laughing at how women at their church approached their widowed father in an attempt to forge a relationship, and I hope that I am never considered desperate if I decide to approach someone despite the fact I know that I am not. None of us want to be the object of ridicule or pity.  And I wonder if that woman will ever be subjected to or understand loneliness. Is it shameful somehow or amusing that people want that basic connection with another person and attempt to get  their needs met?  To me it seems rather troubling rather than funny.

One thing the last year has taught me is that I can live alone, and that I can be relatively happy living alone.  Still the thought of never being held, never being loved again, is just too sad.  My mother, who divorced in her fifties and is now in her nineties and never had another man/woman relationship, lists not trying harder to establish such a relationship as one of her regrets. Will I repeat her mistake?  And if it was a mistake for her, would that necessarily mean it would be a mistake for me?  My life has settled into a routine that I am comfortable with.  Do I really want to disrupt it?  Or will it even be an issue?  Perhaps no one will ever be interested in me romantically again.  And if they are, would it somehow be a betrayal of what we were?  Sometimes, love, I get confused, and I miss having you hear to talk to and to help me sort things out.

So many questions plague me this New Year, love.  You and others have often told me that I "think too much," and perhaps you were right.  But it is, you know, a part of the me that you loved, or at least tolerated in the name of love.  My New Year would be happier with you here but you are not. Still there will be, I am certain, new  opportunities if I open my eyes and seize them.  In many ways each New Year is a present to be unwrapped, what is inside unknown until the paper is stripped and the box opened.  May I not overlook opportunities that present themselves if those opportunities will enrich my life, and not just in relationships. After all, what if I had overlooked you? I still remember when we first met and you thought I could not get the wheelbarrow full of horse manure out the damned barn door.  I showed you, didn't I;-)   Even in the midst of manure there can be flowers if we open our eyes.

Happy New Year, love!  Wait for me.  Melissa