Good Year or Bad?

In the wee early years, I wondered what defined a good year as opposed to a bad one. As the years ticked by the same question arose and left my awakening without answer. Interesting.

We could base our answer on financial stability or success – a major advancement in financial wealth or earning power, for example – or on family developments of note like new babies, weddings, and so forth. Even a happy trip while on vacation makes a so-so year perk up a lot.

So those are the positives. Many more come to mind, too, like access to highly enjoyable experiences like concerts, meals, parties and so much more. Turn now, however, to the negatives. What might they be?

Well, health problems come to mind readily. So too financial reversals – loss of job, major debt creation that sinks the financial ship, or a declining career that dwindles one’s future down to a powdery dry shell.

Health is a biggie on this array: well-being, mobility, enjoyment of life, and such. Of course, ill health leads to the possibility of death. Now that’s a downer for a year being called ‘bad’.

Still, death is expected for each of us. It is only a matter of when and how. Early years, of course, are bad. Painful and slow deaths are a negative. Gruesome and sudden causes carry their own weight of sorrow. But in the end? Death is a companion of birth. You can’t have one without the other. It is the story of all life on this planet.

Some young kids, when they realize the truth of this matter, exclaim “What’s the point?” You bet! What is the point? Exactly?

It is not a point really, but a fact. A fact of life. It is what it is. It will occur however and whenever. Its inevitability is unarguable. That alone leaves each of us with the prospect of how we are going to handle it in its many forms. Death of a friend, a loved one, a colleague, or a seminal person in our life? A spouse? Parent? Child? Each has its own weight of feeling and terror.

I once had a college friend who lost his parents in a car crash. He finished the year but disappeared after that, his world turned upside down. Both emotionally and financially, his future was decidedly an unhappy one.

That caused me to consider the demise of my own parents. I figured the financial element would settle out OK, but the emotional one would play out in an unknown manner. My older brother lived near our family home in New York, my sister was in college in California, and here I was in Illinois. Somehow our grief would take on logistical efforts, and emotional ones. I was confident we would survive the catastrophe somehow. We would go on to our own life plans marked by the loss of our parents, but otherwise learn from the experience.

Over the years, my homework on death served me well. I was prepared for the loss of loved ones, and highly liked others! It became an agenda item for my life: prepare for someone’s death; cushion the inevitable shock.

So far, I have not been touched by the death of a son or daughter, or a grandchild. The death of my parents was orderly and expected. Dad died at 88, Mom at 104. No spousal death until this year with Rocky’s passing.

And yes, that was a blow. A shock. But not sudden. It came over a period of 3 or 4 years decline, then the last 10 months of his life. By January of 2023 we knew the outcome was inevitable. In July it was done. Prepared and drained. But in control. So far, so good.

What lies ahead is my own demise at an unknown moment. At 80 I know it is sooner than later. But by 82? Or 92? Ours is a long-lived family so the when remains a mystery. It remains inevitable, however.

That leaves me, and all of us, to make the best of a bad thing and celebrate the who is departing from us. In the long run, that is the only thing that counts. Was the life well lived and purposeful? The answer does not make the year a good one or bad. No, that measure belongs to the living through the trials and tribulations of the death.

I’d say that 2023 was not a good year for me. Especially true for Rocky. He was the one who suffered the most. But we all felt it and witnessed the journey. Yes, a bad experience and outcome. So, the measure of bad is the label for 2023 at this end.

December 27, 2023