All the Fuss About New Year's Day...

New Year is the time at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count is incremented. For many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner. The New Year of the Gegorgian calendar, today in worldwide use, falls on 1 January, continuing the practice of the Roman calendar. There are numerous calendars that remain in regional use that calculate the New Year differently.

The order of months in the Roman calendar has been January to December since King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BC, according to Plutarch and Macrobius. According to Catholic tradition, 1 January is the day of the circumcision of Jesus (on the eighth day of his birth), when the name of Jesus was given to him (Luke 2:21).

It was only relatively recently that 1 January became the first day of the year in Western culture. Up to 1751 in England and Wales (and all the British dominions) the New Year started on 25 March.

• The Chinese New Year also known as the Lunar New Year, occurs every year on the new moon of the first lunar month, about four to eight weeks before spring. The exact date can fall anytime between 21 January and 21 February of the Gregorian calendar 
• Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon after the Vernal Equinox.
• New Year's Day in the Sikh Nanakshahi calendar is on 14 March.
• The Assyrian New Year, called Rish Nissanu, occurs on the first day of April.

Everyone speaks of the New Year with such promise and hope to begin again. They made mistakes in the past year and it seems fitting that a brand New Year is the best time to make new resolutions and start all over. I am gonna eat less, exercise more, spend less money, spend more time with family, stop smoking, stop gambling, get a better job, take a vacation and try to greatly improve the old me. While we all look to the  New Year with great expectations, most of the things we promise or swear we are going to do usually fall short about a week into the New Year. They say that anything you do for two solid weeks becomes a habit and you can keep it better. Most resolutions are over before Jan 3 or 4 come around. 

There are many New Year’s Day that come around in your life if you think hard enough. It isn’t just the beginning of the new calendar year; it could be your birthday as you begin the New Year of your new age, your anniversary as you begin the New Year of your marriage or it could be as simple as the New Year since Easter was here. It always begins a New Year for me on April 20. I begin the next 365 days without Heather. Just in case you didn’t know this is a Leap Year, so I get to spend an extra day this year without Heather. It will take me 366 days this year to reach a New Year.

In 2009, I know that Heather’s New Year resolution was she wanted to live. Period! End! Nothing more she just wanted to survive the year with her health. But not long into the year she knew something was wrong and everyone knows how her story ended. Not the ending that anyone wanted or expected in 2009.

With the beginning of a New Year it becomes further and further away that Heather lived. The New Year is approached with dread as it goes from 1 year to 2 years and then 3 years and so on. The end of the current year means I have passed all the days without Heather again. 365 days of Mondays thru Sundays and every holiday of the year have come and gone. 365 days of missing Heather, missing her smile, her eyes, listening to her voice, to her play the piano or be upset about the jerk at Circle K. Her imagine becomes harder to see in my mind and her voice is muffled so I can’t quite hear the way it sounded. I have photos and some video but these in no way replace having her here.

My New Year resolutions don’t match up with the rest of the world’s ideas and expectations as to what they should be. I want to hang onto Heather and her memory with everything I have, but I want to let go so maybe it might not hurt so bad all the time. I want people to be understanding that I am simply not going to get over IT, but I also want people to treat me as if I am just like everyone else that are not a grieving mother. I want everyone who knew Heather to remember her every day and talk about her not just on the death day and her birthday.

With each passing moment of 2012 Heather is with me. Nearly every store I go into, or show I watch there is something to remind me of Heather. I see very few movies that I do not end up shedding a tear because it has touched a chord with my heart. It will be this way for me for as long as I continue to live. The old year or the New Year is not going to make any difference. Most of the time I want to cancel all of the months and holidays of the year and New Year’s Day is no different. Everyone is so happy, they have a clean slate to begin making strides or mistakes in. People ask me if I have any new resolutions…I smile and say not really. Most people will not understand when I say I just want to survive the year. Everyone is surviving from day to day, but I am surviving from one memory to the next, one holiday to the next and one day without Heather to the next…