Here we are, just four days into the New Year and I am already looking back on last year, or was it just last week? It was Friday, the 30th, just one day away from the last day of the year, yet another whole year without my son and the last year that my mother would be alive.

Both are hard for me. 

I had an appointment up north that had been a long time coming. Based on conversations I had with my primary care provider who sent a referral to a surgeon, I was quite sure that I would spend the rest of the day digesting the fact that one of my ovaries would have to be removed. I had enlisted Brian to take me, too afraid to receive alone what felt like tragic news, meaning that he had to take a day off from work — which translates to a day without pay, something we don’t take lightly around here.

A storm had also appeared to help us usher in the New Year. It escorted us up 70 miles of Northern California highway as we wound our way through towering redwoods, fertile pastures and alongside the ever beckoning waters of Humboldt Bay.

I really don’t know why I was so fearful to hear I might lose an ovary. I mean, I don’t use them anymore. The shopkeeper has long since turned down the lights, signaling that they will be out of business soon. Maybe it’s because that is where Josiah came from, or where the sibling he begged for could have sprang forth from. Or maybe it’s just because I am a woman and those are my womanly parts. 

The rain bore down on us hard as we barreled up the road, Brian’s hands clenched the steering wheel despite the pain from his month-long sore shoulder — always keeping us safe, that one.

He spent the entire drive attempting to have conversations with me, but my mind was elsewhere — somewhere in between my left ovary, the yet-another-year-without-you and the head cold I couldn’t seem to shake. I missed everything but the awkward pauses that came as he waited for me to reply.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” 

What a drag I must be…

“I’m sorry sweetie, I just can’t seem to focus this morning.”

“It’s okay, baby,” he replied. “We’re almost there.” 

I had more than just these things on my mind that day. I was gearing up for New Years Eve, but not in the way most do, more like fastening my seatbelt in fear of impending doom. In 2019, the first New Years without my son, friends from back east whom I had never met, pooled money to buy tickets to send me to see Dead & Company play at the Chase Center in San Francisco. I couldn’t say no and yet, it was hard to say yes. I didn’t want to go celebrate or put on a dress, but I did it anyways, attempting to put my grief on hold, and ran into other friends, some new, some old. Josiah’s friends were there too, two of the core four.

I had no idea what I was going to experience that night. I thought it was just New Years Eve, but as we neared midnight, that’s not what I found, when close to 20,000 people started to cheer during the last ten seconds of my son’s Final Year.

They shouted and beamed, “TEN, NINE, EIGHT,” 

As my heart screamed, “NO, NO, NO!”

“SEVEN, SIX, FIVE,”

“NO, NO, NO!”

“FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE…”

“NO, NO, NO, NOOOOO…”

“HAPPY NEW YEAR!!” they declared as my soul tore apart. 

I roared in response, “I’LL NEVER CELEBRATE THE YEAR YOU DIED!!”

As everyone else seemed to revel despite his demise.

I couldn’t help but stand there and cry.

Although I was with friends, surrounded by the love they shared, I felt all alone on that New Years Eve.

That’s still how I feel about the last day of the year. I don’t want to celebrate because it’s just one more year of loss to grieve. And this year it wasn’t only my son who I’d lost, but my mom who began hospice on my birthday and died one week later, just eight days after Mother’s Day.

…

As traffic slowed through Eureka, the large-town-wanna-be-city that is our county seat, the rain began to come down in sheets. I stared out the window at the dreary, dark grey and saw to my right, a homeless man dragging his shopping cart up the street. The rain was so heavy that it made it hard to see. 

My heart sank when I saw him, but then noticed he wasn’t alone. 

Clinging to the handle on what was now the back of his cart was another homeless man with his own wheels – two large, two small – fastened to the wheelchair he was a part of. He had no legs, just two strong arms and a loyal friend who wasn’t going to leave him out there alone.

I only spent five seconds with them.

Maybe ten, but not more, as we had the great fortune of being inside a car headed north.

“That is the true definition of compassion,” I thought. That man, the one with the cart, could’ve left the other to fend for himself, but he did not.

Sometimes, I feel so alone in my suffering, but that kind of suffering I do not know. I can witness it, see it, say “Oh geez, that must be hard,” but the only thing I feel is what I feel in my heart.

I spend a lot of my life compartmentalizing, not exactly cohabitating with my pain, I don’t know how else to survive, but when I saw those two men, one helping the other in the onslaught of rain, I realized how fortunate I am. I have two ovaries still, a safe car and sweet man, with our worries about paychecks, but there is food in the cupboards and heat in our home, as we hunker down together to weather life’s storms.

And those two men on the side of the road with their wheels unlike mine, seemed to bellow without words,

“YOU ARE NOT ALONE!”

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