So This is New Years.

Dear Phillip;

So this is New Years.

And that was Christmas.

I feel like John Lennon. Every time I heard that song on the radio over the holidays I found myself thinking "Yeah, so this is Christmas. So what?"

I knew it would be hard. SO hard. One evening I lay on the settee and watched the lights on the tree twinkle and balled my eyes out, thinking of the times you and I watched the lights on the tree together. And remembering when you were smaller you would lay on the floor with your head right under the tree, looking up through the tree at the lights twinkle.

But New Year's Eve was almost harder than Christmas.

New Year's Eve will always be YOUR night. Your solo trip to New York. Your night at Times Square. I knew I couldn't watch the Times Square ball drop. But I couldn't forget about it, either. So I turned on your Waterford Anniversary crystal ball to remember your special New Year's Eve.

The new year is a time for looking forward, but to what?

To a whole NEW year without you?

I can't believe how quickly 2011 went. People wished me a Happy New Year with a caring nod to "thank goodness 2011 is over". But turning the page on the year won't actually make anything different. I don't feel that I have made it through the valley of the shadow of death; I don't see light at the end of the tunnel. Good things will happen in 2012, but it won't be all better.

How is it that time is still moving so quickly? I have so much more of it available to me now I thought I would be more aware of it, but that just isn't happening. I find myself looking back at a day or a week and wondering what I did with the time. When you were here I packed so much into a day I now wonder how I did it all. It's like Time is a river. If you are trying to swim upstream you are very aware of the speed of the current. But if you just give yourself up to the current and float with it you aren't as aware that you are moving downstream even faster than you were before. I guess that's where I am now; I'm floating with the current rather than trying to swim upstream by constantly being up against the clock.

Which is best?

Thoreau said "What makes you think you can kill time without wounding eternity?" Am I killing time? Or am I living in the present? Should I be watching the riverbank slip past me, and resisting it by swimming upstream as much as possible? Or should I focus on the water around me and ignore the speed of the current?

I cannot forget your motto, tattooed on your arm: "All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you." Time was so precious to you. I don't want to feel like I'm wasting any of the time that has been given to me.

So, Phillip, what should I do?

Should I just flow with the current?

Or will you expect a report on what I did with this time when I get to the end of the river?