Gone But Not Forgotten (Drop Cookies)

I started the New Year out right, with a glass of my favorite schlock champagne (Marwood Select) and a homemade forgotten drop cookie. As I sat watching the ball fall with John and my friend Daniel and his partner Don, I clinked my glass of champagne with John's and took a sip and began to turn over the previous year in my mind and decided that 2009 was, as far as years go, a gigantic pile of crap.

2009's bum economy, my mother's unsuccessful cancer treatment and her death in March, John's rapid decline in health and near death in July/August, the loss of my beloved greyhound Buster and a not-unsubstantial amount of varied other grim and gloomy tidings all mixed together to make this year the huge pile of stinking, fetid crap that it was.

I took a sip of my champagne and wiped away a few errant tears that had escaped my eyes and thought, 'Well, 2009 sucked, 2010 will have to be better.' I then popped the crunchy meringue cookie in my mouth and thought, 'gone, but not forgotten.'

I then counted myself lucky to have had my mom around as long as I did (36 years!), and John and I were lucky to have Buster for 10 good years, and John and I have been together for 14 years now!

True enough, the year 2009 is now gone, but it's not forgotten. Miserable years bring a whole different but equally important set of life lessons with them than do the joyous ones. And indeed, lessons were learned this year and our lives were changed in ways we were able to comprehend right away and in ways we won't really be able to comprehend until some point in the future.

Time marches on and stops for no one. It heals all wounds and, as I found this year, can make even some dark memories from our past seem golden. Time is neither fair nor unfair. It is what it is, and in truth, time is what you make of it.

Happy 2010! Let's make it one to remember!

-BK