Hello, Vixens!!!  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, happy holiday or just time to yourself, depending on what or how you celebrated.  It is always mind boggling to me that with all the months and weeks of preparation, the festivities just fly by!!!

Like so many of us tend to do this time of year, I find myself looking back on the year we are about to say goodbye to as I plan and hope for the new one ahead.  But in looking back, my memories wander past 2015 to so many other years gone by and the precious pieces of time those years have taken with them.

I wonder how it is possible that I am now older than my mother was when she died at the young age of 36.  Or that even though my dad lived to be twice her age, these last four years without him have been the loneliest I have ever known.  And how much I miss calling my paternal grandmother every night despite the fact that she died 14 years ago.  Some habits just do not go quietly.

My parents at their engagement party in 1961 & on their wedding day in May 1962.

I know a lot of people who say they feel their loved ones around them and that is a comfort.  I long for that feeling.  For me, the pain of my losses is so real and present every single day I feel more like John Nash (who died this year) in “A Beautiful Mind”, minus the mental illness induced hallucinations, of course.  My family is real, they are just not here anymore.  But I feel as if they are following me around like Nash’s imagined college roommate Charles did.  I can talk to my family in my head and imagine what they would say, but they ignore me the way Nash had to ignore Charles for his own good.  But how heartbreaking was it when Nash confessed to his wife,  “sometimes I really miss talking to him.”

My family does not ignore me intentionally, it is just a result of the veil that separates our roads.  I may see them, or hear them, and I know they are there, yet there is no way to touch them or feel them.  And sometimes the need to do that is so overwhelming I cannot breathe, which almost makes me wish they would just disappear for a minute or two so I could catch my breath.

My paternal grandparents on their wedding day in April 1934.  Unfortunately I never knew my grandfather , but my grandmother (Idie) raised me after my mother died. 

But like Nash, I always see them and it is up to me to know that some days will be worse than others.  And on the really bad days, I have to close my eyes to my family just to get through.  But eventually I will have to open my eyes again and when I do, I see that veil that stands between us so clearly.  They may be my family but heartbreakingly, they are in my past and as Nash said about his hallucinations, “They are my past. Everyone is haunted by their past.”  Incredibly big sigh.

Thank you all for being a part of my past year on this blog.  Your support means so much to me and I sincerely hope you will continue with me in the future.  I wish you all love, blessings, luck, happiness, health, great music and great finds in the year ahead and beyond!!!

Here is my last song recommendation for 2015.

Enjoy!!!