What's in a Year?

As I sit here with the Super Bowl halftime blaring out in all its football glory, I find myself pondering the names of the somewhat familiar faces belting out somewhat familiar songs, and I realize that at some point I have become not-so-young. Honestly, I know I've seen them, but I really don't know who these people are...

But Super Bowl means it's February, and February means that next month is March, and March 27th means a one-year mark since Bill's passing from cancer. Now, I'm not one to remember Super Bowls (unless my team is playing), but I remember last year. Last year was different. Last year's Super Bowl was watched from the side of a hospital bed. Last year's Super Bowl was watched with nurses running in and out, a few with one eye on the TV and one on the patient, as they went from room to room. Last year's Super Bowl did not consist of nachos and sandwiches or boisterous celebration. No, last year's Super Bowl was but a slight diversion mixed with hope and fear, uncertainty and desperate optimism, mangled in with beeping machines and an upcoming second surgery.

I find myself with an incredulous feeling over this upcoming "anniversary." I cannot fathom that Bill has been gone that long. It seems like only yesterday he was here shouting, "Rejoice!" and talking too loudly on the telephone. Yet, at the same time, I feel like he's been gone forever. How I miss his presence! These opposites coexisting within me is a mystery.

I know that I have made progress. I know that I am better than I was even six months ago, but somehow I thought that by hitting the one-year mark the whole trauma of it all would seem further away than it really does. I thought by now there might be a pretty thick wall between me and the trauma but, in reality, I feel like there's only a shoji screen between me and all that horror. All I have to do is pull back that screen or peek over it to feel the magnitude of what has happened. By God's grace, the majority of days now that screen stays mostly shut, but sometimes I can hear those events and see the shadows through the screen, and occasionally something will trigger the latch and it comes flying open to reveal in full color what we have lived through.

However, the New Year brought with it a sense of rebirth for me. The year of my husband's death is over, never to return. I have a new feeling that I can take a step forward, no matter how small that step may be - and if I can take one, then who's to say I can't take another and another, until I end up somewhere unexpected and beautiful? Wherever I end up and however long it takes me to get there, I'm hoping the journey eventually finds me laughing and enjoying family and friends, hosting and attending get togethers, and maybe, just maybe, even jumping up and down at a Super Bowl party, nachos in hand.