Well, here it is- the end of 2007.
The year that started with you getting a raise and a promotion at work.
The year that your Mum came to visit.
The year that we made heaps of progress in the house renos.
The year we were going to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.
The year we were going to visit family and friends in Oz.
The year that we were going to__________.
Anything could fit in that blank, because you and I were never without ideas and enthusiasm, now, were we, babe?
We had plans and time frames, but most importantly, we had love and trust.
Of course 2007 will always be the year of your death as well.
Death. Even now, after almost nine months, I have a hard time with that word , writing it, using it to describe you, honey.
I remember that first New Year's Eve when you and I were chatting on ICQ. You were having a "barbie" out on the "veranda" and you were drinking Jim Beam and coke with a swig of "champers" at midnight.
You sent me a "virtual kiss"-remember how silly those emoticons were? LOL
I teased you that you would have to stay up and send me another when it was midnight in my part of the world :)...
...and you did!
It was the millennium year of 2000; NYE of 1999 was the first we spent together, even though we were on different continents. When I finally went to sleep the night that you were already in the midst of revelry and mayhem-who knows what time it was-it was with a huge smile and a promise of wonderful things to come.
When I woke up the next morning at 7 AM, I absentmindedly turned on the TV. Imagine how I felt when the first image of the new millennium was the Princes Bridge over the Yarra, all sparkled up with fireworks and the word 'Melbourne" spelled out over the span of that structure! As soon as I saw that image, the phone rang-and of course, it was you. :)))))))))))
I am a big believer in signs, and to me you couldn't get a much better one than that!I took it as a nod from the universe herself, saying,"Go for it! He's worth it! It will all work out just fine!"
Well, as they say, two outta three ain't bad, babe.
The next NYE it snowed in Dallas. I have a tape of me and the kids and Rangie running around in the falling snow, me with my huge ( read: nice and WARM) fake fur coat and the kids with their pray-for-snow-boots, just hoping that the stuff would stick so we could have a snowball fight. We had hot chocolate when we finished filming and the kids and I talked about how jealous you would be not to be in the snow with us once you saw that tape. It was so achingly a Hallmark card moment, but it was also terribly real-we may have been apart, but we were all so happy then. Just to know that love lived inside our hearts-that was enough.
By the time the third NYE came around, we had set a wedding date and talked via vid-cams. I got to say Hi to all your friends on that thing that year. We had already visited each other's respective countries and families and 2002 would ensure that we would never again be living apart on opposite sides of the starfields.
Our first NYE together in the US we went out to dinner-I feel horrible that I don't remember where-and we came home and you played bartender and we celebrated just being in the same house on the same day. Mikey had been really sick so it was low key but happy none the less. We grabbed that brass ring, didn't we honey?
Fast forward to Dec 31, 2007. I am sitting here writing at your computer in your AC/DC flannels that I got you for Christmas years ago. They are so warm and comfy-no wonder why you always had them on around the house! For a while the tee-shirt still had your scent- musky and masculine is the only way I can describe it-but now I have washed it a zillion times, so it usually just has dog hair and fuzz on it. No scent either, unless a dog has been sleeping in my lap :P
KERA is on the TV inside in the lounge room-violinist Joshua Bell just played some Tschikovsky , and Pavarotti is now singing ( obviously taped the year before his death). I can't bear to watch Dick Clark or any of the other insipid NYE celebration parties ,TV style. They will without a doubt play a song that will remind me of you, of us, and I will cry even more. As if that were possible today.
I am drinking a cuppa tea and the house is still, except for my tears and my typing.
M and A are out and will not be home until very late. How I envy their night; getting dressed up, going out , spending the time with someone they care about. Kissing at midnight and having that thing, that hopefulness, that better days are ahead kind of mentality.
As they should have at the tender age of 22! (My fave NYE of all time was bringing home TWO babies, all of five days old and six pounds each, on NYE back in 1985.)
Oh honey, to think that just last year we had that hopefulness as well. We had a future and a family and we looked forward to nurturing it all and watching it bloom. Only now, the frost has come too early. It has stifled the buds of those new shoots of what was our life together. They only thing left is the intertwined roots. The roots of love.
I was doing so much better before the holidays. Because holidays are the way we mark time, it's doubly hard. This year's holiday season will always be known as :
"The first Christmas/NYE we had to survive without Daz..."
( For example-What did you do last Christmas? Ok, now what did you do last January 10th? See? )
I had a few people who asked what I was doing tonight-and I know how I react to times like this now, and I know how to protect myself and spare them my emotions. I am at home with the dogs and my cuppa, safe to let my feelings out, safe to cry, safe to curse (and curse again) the powers that be who thought in their infinite wisdom that your leaving us so soon was somehow a good idea that just couldn't wait.
Goddamn.
I did, however, have someone wish me a Happier New Year yesterday-and I decided that I like that better than Happy New Year.
Weird, I know, but it makes sense to me-it will be far more in my realm to be happier than I am now than to be the ubiquitous happy. Like I said, honey, weird, I know. But hey, you know me and words, LOL
2008 will be here soon. I have no expectations of it. I only know that it will be a year in which you will not be by my side. That breaks my heart, honey. Sorry. It just does.
To me, they could just number all the years of the rest of my life with numerals, names, or Sanskrit hieroglyphs, because the last year that mattered to my heart was 2007.
The year I still had you.
Love you, Dazzy. Always.
Kisses, Wifey.
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