Dear Everyone,
This year's letter has been a tough one to nail down.
We had a banner year. 2014 up and tattooed itself all over our lives. New jobs, new friends, new priorities. New possibilities revealing themselves. The year showed us what we could be, what we could do. Then it ended by reminding us of what we already had.
My maternal grandmother died early last month. The wake of her passing was enormous, even if the fact of her death was an overdue mercy. We gathered together in that wake, held each other and wept. And laughed. And ate. And then I wrote you a letter.
Just a few weeks later, my paternal grandfather died too. Just like my Nanaw, his death was a mercy, and just like my Nanaw, he left behind one hell of a wake. He left a hole in things. So again we gathered and held and wept and laughed and ate. And then I scrapped that letter and wrote you another one.
This morning I came to work to discover that a friend and coworker, a 33-year-old husband and father, was killed in a car wreck the night before. He left a hole in things too, one we weren't braced for. So I scrapped that second letter and am starting over again.
I'm unsure of what to say.
My temptation when I write these is to wrap a tidy little bow around things, to shoehorn the events of our lives into some kind of theme. But however comforting that may be to write or to read, those lives defy an effort that small and limiting. It feels dishonest even to try. Losing so many drove that point home.
But it's not just the barrage of loss and tragedy. It's everything, every mark on our lives, good and bad. Each one a single drop, some bigger than others, but none of which is easily contained.
I can't get my head around the sheer mass of all those drops, even just from this year: Loved ones lost, loved ones gained. Corners turned. Chance encounters that rearranged everything. They leave me with no neat little gift to give you. They leave me gobsmacked.
A single life is an inscrutable, baffling, insane thing. There is no order to it, no theme. There are only those drops, added one by one to a great, churning sea of longing and laughter and fear and all-too-brief satisfaction.
The chaos of all that churning is living, moving art. It seeks infinite rearrangement, and that means infinite possibility.
And therein lies our hope. Because as long as the chaos holds, as long as the sea churns, the possibilities don't run out. We can still do more. Be more. There is still time.
There is no map for this. All you can do is wade in, see where it takes you. Maybe keep an eye out for anyone who looks like their arms are getting tired. It can be terrifying as all hell, but it's also pretty damn thrilling, and I am discovering that even that terror is a gift. Even the heartbreak.
We hope your year has been a good one or, failing that, that it has laid the groundwork for good things to come. We couldn't stay afloat without you, and for that we thank you and love you and will be certain to sacrifice the small forest creature of your choosing to Zalgo, the Nezperdian Hive Mind of Chaos. Or maybe we'll make pie.
2015 looks to be at least as terrifyingly full of possibility as 2014. I propose we hold hands.