These few days after Christmas have been all about getting organized in the Smith household. Cleaning and organizing have always been my go-to relief for calming the chaos I create for myself. Maybe it's COVID or maybe that I haven't seen my therapist in a while, but this December has been particularly difficult in the anxiety department with thoughts of death and illness dancing around every corner. So we've done what I do best and basically sheltered in place because living in fear seems more comfortable for some insane reason than living in faith. 

Yesterday Levi and I were in my closet going through my jewelry. I would decide if something was going to stay or go and the things I never wear were handed to my little helper in which he turned them into creations and inventions that only a imaginative little mind could come up with. I pulled open one drawer of my standing jewelry chest and found this 2009-2010 planner. I don't remember ever having this planner and as I flipped through it, it was completely void of any notes or circled dates. I have no idea if keeping this planner is a coincidence or if I kept it in this drawer because of the years on the cover. 

Of course I had to flip to the fateful day, like somehow, even after all these years, I may find an answer in there to any of my unanswerable questions. No answers, just facts. December 31, 2009 was on a Thursday. It was a full moon. The end. 

As the constriction in my chest began without warning, I began to get frustrated. Why does my body remember such pain when my life today consists of such joy and so many blessings? 

I look over at Levi as he is taping a bracelet to an old charger and poking earrings through the cord, and wonder what differences my kids would notice if I didn't project my anxieties upon them at times. It's just that in 2009 I came to know total devastation of the strongest love I had come to know in my 29 years of life. Lawson and Levi brought a next-world level of love into my life, and with it, a completely new level of fear. There would be no recovery.

Levi looks up, and sees me staring at him, "What mommy?"  he says as his sweet bluegreen eyes search my face. "Nothing, baby, I just love you." Then he takes the little planner out of my hands and says, "Can I have this?" At first, I wanted to be protective over it, like I have with so many trivial things from my old life. Instead, I snapped these pictures for my writing therapy, and let him run off with a pencil and his newest, "treasure". 

For years I've spent every NYE reminiscing about the last day Dan and I ever spent together, but it always ends the same way. He dies at the end of that day.

Today is December 30, 2021, 12 years since the last time Dan was alive for a full 24 hour day. I want to celebrate that.  I am going to switch it up a bit this year. I have no idea how we spent that Wednesday 12/30/09, but I am sure we smiled and joked and laughed as everyone should each day God allows breath in our lungs. Today is the day I will visit the cemetery. I will drink a beer and share my secrets, fears, thoughts, and laughs out loud toward the cold stone in the ground and the spirit in the air. I'll leave him with Patron seeping into the ground along with the remainder of the day's rain and hopefully my December chaos too. 

Tomorrow will be spent with my full and whole heart loving my family, making new memories, and with the help and grace of our Savior, beginning the new year with less fear.