The Mixed Bag of January 1
While I believe that we can make changes in our lives any time of the year, there is something special about the new year– moving to a new calendar on the wall, coming out of the holidays (what I called “post-Christmas” at my house yesterday).
But for me, January 1 is a mixed bag, combined with losses and additions that happened over the past twenty years on New Year’s Day.
On January 1, 1995, my first new year in Albuquerque, the family dog (really my sister Karen’s dog but because she was off at college and not living in places where she could have a dog, Chaos stayed at the Linn house), died. We weren’t even two years past my sister Denise’s death and, while Chaos was twelve, it another loss to the family as we knew it.
Then on January 1, 2005, as I was coming down the stairs in the morning after running and a shower, excited to watch bowl games, work on some sewing, and eat the leftovers from the New Years’ Eve dinner party we’d had the night before, my brother called to tell me that our dad was on the way to the hospital after collapsing in front of Mom. They pulled him off life support not long after and he died quickly.
For me, January 1 is a combination of losses but it also has some happy memories with it.
After all, on January 1, 2003, my then husband and I walked down to the house where we had lived just two years before to borrow a movie from the guys who knew who lived there. It was kind of a depressing day: we’d had a party the night before which had been good but our bathroom remodel had come to a standstill because the guy working on it had a little too much holiday fun.
Around the corner came a dog that Jim had found and Jim begged us to take him for the night. The dog stood shyly behind furniture and we were both hesitant. We owned our home but taking on a dog? That was a little scary to me.
“Meet your new parents!” Jim told the dog excitedly.
By the next day, Joe told me to call Jim and tell him, “The dog is staying with us.”
Thirteen years later, Chaco just celebrated his fifteenth birthday.
Finally, on December 31, 2008, we stopped at a dental practice in Muldrew, Oklahoma, on the Arkansas border and picked up a German Shepherd rescue puppy. The ride home in a snow storm (I thought the puppy would be scared as we drove through the canyon into Albuquerque but it was Chaco who wanted to sit in my lap) should have been a sign that there wouldn’t be any dull moments with life with Gidget.
While on New Year’s Day I don’t forget it’s the day that both my dad and Chaos left this world, I cling to the two dogs who joined my life, knowing that life is too short and fragile to be held by all that I have lost.
