Airing out my rooms for 2025
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- December 29, 2024
- 730
Somehow the last column of the year is upon me. I was talking with friends this morning that my word of the year is “upheaval.” Some of their words were “centered” and “heart” and maybe “encourage.”
If anything, my word of the year is always a chaotic one. Upheaval is right.
We moved to a new town last January and settled in slowly. In June George had quintuple heart bypass surgery, and our son got married at the end of that month. Healing and hard things followed. George has fought several infections since September (pertaining to his surgery), and it’s felt endless.
Election week of November, if that week wasn’t hard enough, I took him to the ER after threatening to call the squad. He had violent chills and fever. They found the infection that had started in the harvested vein site on his leg in September had traveled to the incision on his chest. The last two months have been filled with antibiotics and the fog of illness.
But today the upheaval feels a bit lighter. After a chest aspiration the other week and waiting on tests, the infection is finally gone, ruling out a reopening of his incision and scraping the bone of infection.
This is not a complaint of this year, but a hope for the next one. But I reserve that we do have the right to feel sad or down about the way some years go. We’re human, and life can disappoint. It’s how we pick up afterward that counts.
2025 is ushering in several things I’m not looking forward to, even leery of, uncertain. But plans are in place, and we have the certainty of continued improvement in health that compels us forward. Our house is warm, there’s food in the fridge and I have a lot of ideas to put into action.
Upheaval is good because it forces you to look at what’s still in place, what hasn’t violently moved in sudden fashion. If you’re a football fan, it gives you a set of fresh downs. I’ll take those downs and run with them straight into the New Year.
I disagree with advice that tells you to lay down what’s hard and focus on the good. What’s hard lets us see what’s good. Pretending everything is fine despite the hardships doesn’t let us feel them. I think feeling the hard things is good for us.
In the midst of taking care of George this year, there were moments I let myself sit and feel sorry for myself. Obviously, I wasn’t the one that was ill, but I may as well have been because I was in the thick of it too. There’s no running from what it involves. You make sure they’re cared for. Then you turn and make sure the house is clean, the bills are paid and the cat litter is scooped. Then you cry a little and do it again.
And that’s OK because that’s what life is full of — mundane tasks and making sure you keep what’s important to you alive, and that includes your spirit. Blow that little flame so it keeps on burning. I’m no martyr; I’m just a human.
I’m lighting a candle and airing out my rooms for 2025. May it treat you well, and if not, may you have the strength to look it in the face and go on.
Melissa Herrera is a reflective writer who captures the beauty and sorrow of change. With a career spanning 14 years as an opinion columnist and the publication of two books, she resides in Stark County with her husband and four cats. She writes to preserve memories. You can reach her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.