I am a planner.  At the start of the new year you can usually find me in a sunny spot in the house with journals and papers and an assortment of coloured pens reflecting on the year that has passed and projecting myself into the year to come.  It’s my way of tying up what has ended and looking forward to what is to come.

Not this year…not part of God’s plan. At the end of the Christmas holidays which were a riot of family and fun, my mother was unexpectedly hospitalized. I received a call in the middle of the first night from the doctor who told me my mother was in respiratory distress and I should come. My mother did not pass away that night as it turns out, but was given another twenty-four days. We both had this time to rest in each other’s presence and for this I am grateful.

Moving into acceptance feels like the opposite of planning to me. It is a much quieter place and doesn’t involve any grand schemes of what might or might not happen in the year to come. It’s about being okay with what is.

Acceptance, it turns out, is not letting me bypass grief or the visceral sense of loss deep in the cells of my body. But it is calling me back to life. Can happiness be that far away?