GOOD-BYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE 2012 – OR IS IT? by Debra H. Goldstein

GOOD-BYE AND GOOD RIDDANCE 2012 – OR IS IT? by Debra H. Goldstein

Good-bye and good riddance 2012.  It was a year of insane running around and life altering events, but it also was a year of wonderful trips and sharing moments of excitement and joy with family and friends.  There was the birth of a second career as my first novel and several short stories won awards and brought me both an opportunity to travel the country meeting fascinating people and a way to use my passion for writing to benefit others.  There were hours spent in hospitals and doctors’ offices as a patient and as a note-taker.  A minor knee surgery paled next to others who were diagnosed with breast cancer, lymphoma, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s.  I had empathy when friends, as I have in the past, lost a parent, but I couldn’t even begin to comprehend the pain being felt when the twenty-five year old son of friends died.

I will remember 2012 as the final year of a personal decade that passed so quickly I could barely keep track of each year.  It also always will be the year my youngest daughter got engaged to the love of her life.  Through her eyes, I once again remembered how and why I fell in love with her father. 

2012 was the year I realized I had fully become my mother.  I actually sound like her when I harp to my children how things should be done or share my worries with them about their choices.  I know I should keep my thoughts about their lives to myself, but I understand how fast things become uncontrollable.  It is the fear of these unknown and unexpected changes that is causing my friends and me to rethink what is important to us.  Our answers are different, but for the first time, a lot of us are balancing thoughts of mortality with what we still want to accomplish.  2012 has been a year of reflection and decision-making.  2013, I hope will be a year of effectuation. 

So, I say goodbye and good riddance to 2012 as having been a difficult year, but then again, so many good things happened during it that I’m a little sad to see it go.