This will be the start of a second calendar year that Kody didn’t get the chance to live through. Starting another new year without him is difficult. When Kody was alive, New Year wasn’t a holiday he liked much. Like his birthday, he saw the New Year as a another marker of what he wasn’t achieving. It was challenging for him to ever see what he had accomplished. For me, this New Year is just as challenging. I have merely been surviving, day to day. My grief journey has been incredibly difficult throughout the last year, so I can only hope this next year will be an improvement.

The last New Year I remember spending with Kody, we set an alarm for 11:45 so that we’d be able to get back up for the turn into the New Year. He joked about how this made us officially old people and I agreed. I don’t know that he ever actually fell asleep because when the alarm rang, he was already up. We went out to our garage and set up camp chairs in the very front of the garage. We opened the garage door at 11:57 since it was chilly and icy outside.

Once the clock turned to midnight, the fireworks started all over the neighborhood. I remember Kody’s smile, lit up in the glow of the red and yellow fireworks. He loved fireworks and there was just something about them that could always make him smile. Once the fireworks were done for the evening, I remember he hugged me for a long time. We went back to bed, but it was a long time before either of us fell asleep. We talked in the dark, until the birds had started singing outside.

Even after Kody and I divorced, he’d always text me at midnight and wish me a Happy New Year. He’d send me pictures of fireworks if there were any. He liked to share the moment with others. He told me the last New Year that he was alive that his resolution was to get help and turn his life around. It was the start of him trying so hard to make changes that would help him with his depression.

Throughout my grief journey, it has been challenging not to think of the New Year as the beginning of the end for him. Actually trying to treat his depression was a great step forward for him, but the more the treatments didn’t work for him, the more depressed he seemed to get. He attempted suicide on at least three occasions that he told me about. Still, I really hoped that the treatments would eventually begin to work.

This New Year, I am planning to spend the day without much celebration. It is easier to think of it as just another day. While it is a good day for reflection and thought about what comes next, I know that it’ll be better for me to reflect less. I look forward to 2023 with minimal hope. The last several years have been years that I hoped would be better. Now I’m mostly just hoping that 2023 will not be worse. I am hopeful that in a year, I will be in a different place in my grief journey. I can only hope!