It’s hard for me to put into words everything I’m feeling tonight. I want to take some time to look back on the year and try to let the maelstrom of emotion distill into something wise and calm that I can take hold of and carry into the new year… I need to be still. It’s hard to though, when you live with someone who would much rather be surrounded by noise and activity!

But I need to take time. Just a moment or two. Just to take it all in. ..

January ~ the year begins with me in a funk and I spend most of the month just trying to show up for class 8 hours a day, five days a week. February ~ I learn the cause of my “lady difficulties” is something growing where only babies should grow, and has likely precluded babies growing there thus far. I’m scared and shaken. March ~ our apartment, a basement suite, is flooded from a leak in the hot water system and the resulting devastation renders us homeless. We spend the month freezing in other people’s basements and looking for a new apartment. We lose all our money, many possessions, and most of our hope. The surgery I need is relegated to the very back of my mind. April ~ we are rescued by God leading us to a beautiful apartment and I get sick with the flu, bronchitis, and a sinus infection, all at the same time. Barely manage to write my exams and papers. May & June ~ the loveliest time with my parents, husband, friends, the most relaxed I have ever been. Pure bliss. July ~ my husband and I end seven years of strife and bitterness, and God joins our souls together in a new marriage. We finally see the OBGYN about the growth in my uterus. It is a polyp. It must come out. We are told we are extremely unlikely to ever conceive on our own. I focus on my health instead. By August ~ I have lost 35 pounds. We are broke, so broke, but so happy with each other and so in love. We don’t know it, but we conceive our first child this month! Will forever believe in miracles. September ~ my husband goes back to school for the first time in twenty years, and I return to school for my second straight year. Increasing exhaustion and nausea prompt my therapist to ask if I could be pregnant. I laugh. We get a test to “rule it out”. At 4:11 AM, September 19, it’s positive. The boundaries of the earth are too narrow for my joy. My entire existence ceases and is remade for one purpose: to nourish and grow our baby. Our baby. October ~ ultrasound! Pure joy, pure love, seeing my baby’s heart beating on the screen. But the spotting is not going away, and I try not to worry because it upsets my husband, but deep down, I’m worried. Thoughts are consumed with trying to determine if symptoms are lessening, if bleeding is worsening. Suddenly, symptoms stop. So does bleeding. One week later, 3:24 AM on October 19, only 13 weeks and 3 days along, I wake up soaked in blood. I deliver in the ER. It was a boy, and he is dead. The bleeding does not stop. I lose too much blood and wind up in surgery. My last thought before the anesthesia drags me under is that it’s okay if I don’t wake up. One week later to the day, my Nana dies. November ~ I’m still in school. I didn’t quit when we discovered our pregnancy, and now it’s too late to quit. I do everything I can. I hurt more than I can believe. Then our car was stolen. We lose what little money we had left. November is a blur. December ~ I go under and don’t come back up again. I cannot think, cannot study, cannot focus. God is with me. My professors are amazing. I file Incompletes on all my courses. My thoughts are silent for many days.

But slowly… I begin to heal. The nights I stay up to see the clock flicker to 3:24 AM are fewer. The days I feel hopeful about the future happen more often. I still get surprised by the undertow of grief every now and then, the sudden flooding of my eyes. I know it will be some time before that goes away. In some far-away little part of me, I don’t want it to.

And now the very active and noisy one I live with is no longer slumbering peacefully on the couch as in the photo, but very much awake and wanting more attention than I can spare while typing, so this will be it for that last post of the year!

Perhaps tomorrow will bring thoughts of the year to come. For now, these last thoughts belong with the last year and I am content to leave them there.