Thoughts about my first New Year's eve alone

[foreverhis]

So I was thinking about what the new year and New Year's eve means for me.

I'm coming up on the 6 month mark, right after the first of the year.  A few people, not those in our close circle of family and friends, have said stuff like "Next year will be better." or "He'd want you to try to be happy next year."  I want to ask what makes them think they know what the new year will bring.  I suppose they're just trying to be positive or supportive or whatever, but it simply strikes me the wrong way.  In fact, it feels arrogant for them to assume what my love would want me to believe or think or do. 

No one knows what the year will hold.  Last New Year's eve we were hopeful that the chemo had worked and would keep the cancer at bay long enough for him to have surgery.  It didn't.  So how the heck can anyone tell me that 2019 is going to somehow be "better"?  My love isn't with me and that is the only thing that would make next year better.  One thing cascaded after another in our family since he died, so I've learned that things can always get worse!

Due to circumstances beyond my family and friends control, I will be alone this New Year's eve.  I've realized that it's probably better that way.  For only the second time in 35 years, my husband will not be here for our midnight kiss. I'm not sure how I'm going to react or act when midnight rolls around.  Even though it's a depressant and I usually only have one each evening, I'll probably have a second or maybe even a third glass of wine (or bubbly) to toast all that we had and hope that we'll be together again not too far down the road.

I have so many memories, from staying on Catalina and attending formal dinner-dances both alone and with friends, to taking our girls for a family getaway, to being just the two of us in a cabin on the rim of the Grand Canyon, to the year we threw an impromptu party thinking most of our friends and family would already have plans and it would be a small gathering--except almost no one had plans and we had a huge wonderful crowd, to various parties at friends homes, to the last many years when it's been a quiet gathering at our home with our two best friends and their two wonderful (now adult) kids.  Last year was just the two of us because he was not quite finished with chemo and couldn't risk exposure to anything.  It was a difficult time, but we were together.

The only other time he wasn't with me, he was with our daughter and brand new granddaughter.  I hadn't been able to travel when she popped out nearly a month early, so I was happy he was with them.  He came home January 6th and that was new year's joy enough.  No matter how tough things were, we would always be hopeful and happy for the simple reason that we were together.  Now that he's been taken from me, I'd rather not have to try to put on a "brave face" for anyone, not even the people in my life who truly love me.  OTOH, those dearest friends are the only people I feel truly comfortable with right now.  I know they'd be supportive and loving, no matter what.  They're feeling terribly guilty not to be here for me, but it's not their fault.

Anyway, I was just pondering these things over the past few days and decided to come here and talk about it.

[Brazil Man]

Feels like yesterday I was celebrating 2018 with my wife.
For 30 years I celebrated the New Year with her. This will be fhe first New Year without my wife. Besides I will enter and live a whole year completely without her.
It's hard and sad to know that there will be no Rosana in 2019 neither in the years to come. So I can say I am quite an unhappy man.

[KayC]

I don't know your beliefs, but I remember feeling incredibly down that first new year w/o George because I was leaving the last year he'd been in.  But now I think, he's somewhere, he exists, just not here with me physically, but he's still there.  It helps me to look up to the stars and think, somewhere out there...

[Nely]

53 minutes ago, KayC said:

remember feeling incredibly down that first new year w/o George because I was leaving the last year he'd been in

This has being my thought and feeling these past days and it's tears me apart. Somehow deep down I just don't want the year I spent with me to pass. Everything just keeps happening fast. Oh my God! I'm just confused....

[Sunflower2]

4 hours ago, Brazil Man said:

I will enter and live a whole year completely without her.

I understand this.  Entering the 2nd year without Wayne sends waves of personal fear and loneliness and despair.  Yet some how I made it through the first. Ugg. So much is so different.