New Years Eve

New Years Eve, a time for rejoicing and starting new.  A time when all hopes and dreams seem not only possible but plausible.  A time to believe in the promise the future holds.  Last New Years Eve Brian and I cuddled on the couch and watched t.v. together.  We talked about how 2011 was going to be a better year.  We believed that 2011 was going to be the year that we could get the cancer to go away (which it was) at least for a little while.....little did we know our lives would be turned upside down, inside out and backwards within a couple of short weeks. 

2011 was not a great year as a whole, but there were good times.  We were able to take our kids to Universal, Seaworld and Disney World.  It is a vacation that they still talk about with a glimmer in their eyes.  We went camping not once, but twice in June.  Once with Brian's aunt, uncle and cousin, and once with his mom.  The kids refer to the last one as the invasion of the raccoons and laugh about how NaNa scared them away with her canoe paddle.

I woke up this morning thinking of the different New Years Eves I spent with Brian, 25 of them.  While I don't remember ALL of them there are ones that stand out more than others.  One year, before I was of drinking age we decided to go to a bar for the night.  The only one we knew we could get into was a gay bar.  As my friend Tammy and I were out on the dance floor, Brian was getting hit on right and left.  Even though he seriously could not dance, he finally came out and started just so the guys hitting on him would know he was with ME, it was really pretty funny.  1992 into 1993...the year we were getting married, we were both so excited.  1998 into 1999, he had just graduated and was getting ready to start working, the hopes and dreams we had at that point were incredible.  Y2K...remember Y2K?  This was one of the best New Years Eves EVER!  We were expecting our first baby in February.  There were all kinds of celebrations throughout Madison.  Brian and I went down to the lake, cuddled on a pier and watched the fireworks over the Capitol at Midnight.  2005 into 2006, we had added three more babies to our Y2K one and were in Alabama with Brian's dad and step-mom.  Another year full of promise.  We were hitting all of our goals at our Chiropractic clinic and FINALLY were feeling some financial freedom.  I remember that Brian went to bed early that night.  He wasn't feeling well. 

When we got home from Alabama Brian went to his doctor to find out what was wrong.  His pancreatic cancer diagnosis took almost two months to confirm.  We were told that he had "A year, probably not two".  2006 was not starting out well and 2007 was looking pretty bleak from a distance.  We fought, hard, and in November of that year Brian had surgery to remove his tumor, which at that point was nothing more than scar tissue.  The pathology showed NO remaining cancer, NONE.  2007 wasn't looking so bad after all.......and it wasn't, 2007 was a great year.  New Years Eve 2008 was again a year of hopes and dreams.  We were again starting to believe in the promise of a long future.  We took our kids to a huge celebration at the Monona Terrace (where our 4 year old son wandered off in a crowd of thousands...THAT was scary!) and watched fireworks with them from the car.  2008 was not the year we had hoped for.  Brian's cancer was re-diagnosed and he went through two surgeries, radiation and more chemo that year.  Again, the cancer pulled back and we were able to enjoy 2009.  2010 was a hard year, though we greeted it as we had all the others, with hope and love for one another and our kids.  No matter how hard things seemed, we always had hope, we always believed that he would get better and we dreamed of our future. 

New Years Eve 2012, the first one in 25 years that I have not spent with Brian.  The first of many.  The beginning of our first full year with out him.  There will be no romantic kiss for me tonight, that is something I will miss the most.  The kids and I will bring in 2012 at my parents house.  We will watch Harry Potter movies in our pjs and have cheese fondue for dinner. It will be a quiet (well, with 4 kids, nothing is EVER quiet!) night and one I'm sure that will bring sadness at the thought of what it truly means.  As I wind my way into 2012 my hope is for a better year, one that brings happiness to me and my kids.  A year that I can once again start to believe in something.  A year that I can dare to dream again.

To everyone who reads this, I hope that 2012 will be everything you want it to be......and more.