In 2025, I want to make you cry

Forget about resolutions. The theme for 2025 is LIVING.

You’re not my better half, you’re two thirds of me.
And when you’re gone, I’ll be gone too.

These are the words my father said to my mother, after she finally got her difficult-to-pin-down cancer diagnosis, nine months into her illness. She died a month later.

Sometimes I forget these words, and I get angry with my dad for seeming checked out, for not engaging with my kid as much as I wish he would. But, the fact that he’s outlived her by three years and continues to remain infuriatingly healthy feels like a punishment to him, and I get it.

I get angry because I know that if mom was the one who remained, she would be squeezing every drop of juice out of life, spending every ounce of energy on playing and connecting with her beloved grandson, showing us all how to tap into our joy, our creative potential, our life force, just by being who she was.

Dad, mom and the kid in 2018.

Sometimes, I get angry at her, too, because she knew she was dying long before the rest of us figured it out, and she tried to hide how bad it was from me. She didn’t want to worry me, as if my every molecule wasn’t made of worry at that point.

If I’d been able to break through my hopeful delusion that she would get better, maybe I’d have fought harder to be with her in the hospital during her final stay. Maybe I’d have gotten her recipe for the cake I called “Pippi Longstocking,” which doesn’t exist in any cookbook.

I found out recently about a year-long course called A Year to Live, the goal of which is to explore forgiveness, gratitude, and letting go — to deepen our experience of living by contemplating death. It was unfortunately already sold out for 2025 by the time I heard about it, but I couldn’t stop turning over the idea of it in my mind. How would I choose to live, if this year was my last?

And then, as if to really hammer home the point, on the eve of the new year my friend Sara sent me 9 Questions to Reflect on the Year. This one has been ringing in my head for the past week:

What would you prioritize next year if you stopped having an “after-life mentality,” (i.e. living for some future reward)?

Okay, okay! I get it, universe.

I have felt so close to death for the past five years. I don’t mean close to dying. I mean close to death as a thing in itself. I’m constantly bumping into it, or running from it, or shutting the door in its face. I watched my mother die, and I had no idea that her death would be the first of so many. I know that nobody is owed a tomorrow, but I couldn’t have guessed at the creative and unexpected ways the universe would find to remind me of this little truth.

“How does it feel to be dying?” I sometimes wanted to ask my mother.

“How does it feel to pretend that you’re not?” is the question I must ask myself in 2025.

All the grief, loss, heartbreak, burnout, pandemic and parenting stress of the past few years has calcified into a hard outer crust, and turned me into a curled-up little pangolin, always protecting my soft insides from the bitter world outside.

Me, feeling crusty yet tender.

No more. I know my dad can’t break out of his protective shell, but I need to break out of mine.

Before my mom died, she told me to take care of him. She was worried about his ability to cope without her. Physically, emotionally, in every way, she was the stronger one. She’d be so proud (and a bit surprised, if we’re being honest) of how much he has learned to do on his own over the past four years. He’s proud of himself too, I can tell. And yes, I know he loves us all, even if it’s hard for him to express it because he’s only one-third here.

In 2025, I’m going to love my dad just as he is, and take care of him in a way he can accept. I’m going to embrace honesty (the painful-and-embarrassing kind), vulnerability, joy, radical self acceptance, and profound-okayness with what is.

Forget resolutions. The theme for 2025 is LIVING. I’m going to worry less about the uncertain future, because what matters is the now. The now is a juicy apple. Let’s eat it, core and all.

The Oblique Strategies cards my family pulled on Jan 1. Courage for the kid; old ideas for the ultimate repurposer and recycler, Colin; and for me, THE WORLD OUTSIDE.

I’m also going to cry. In my car, on the street, in the subway, during a perfectly normal conversation about something that isn’t even sad, because I am opening myself up to the world and the feelings are big. I won’t apologize for it, because crying is fine (wonderful, even!), and you should try it too, maybe.

I’m also going to try to believe in people, and in this sad ol’ broken down world, a bit more than is my curmudgeonly default. Last weekend, I went to a memorial / celebration of life for my friend Bob, and every story that was told about him was some version of “Bob believed in me, he supported me, he saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself.” More than anyone I’ve ever known, Bob believed in people, in the power of community, in our inherent competence and capableness and ability to rise to the occasion and make great things happen, or at least get the job done. I’d like to be a little bit more like that in 2025.

Bob, looking at me like he believes in me, in 2001.

We’re not dead yet, but one day we will be. Maybe not tomorrow, but one day. Or maybe tomorrow. Isn’t that the beautiful terror of the whole thing?

Let’s squeeze the juice out of life.

Squeezing the juice, or wheezing the juice? IYKYK

Happy new year, friends. I love you!