2016 - a recount

2016 —  many saw you like a legendary creature with avian traits; scaled and fire-spewing hatred and death everywhere around our precious world.  You were unforgiving and cruel. People died in senseless wars while you hoarded treasures for yourself. People armed with long-barreled weapon slaughtered the innocent.  People drove their trucks carrying payloads of steel into festive stalls and fairgoers, leaving trails of death and unsurpassed sadness behind.  But you fanned your fire-breathing fanged beast face, like the dragon you were, and still taunted us to count on you even when we couldn't.  Sometimes, you were so cold, even in the midst of a summer, all we could see was our breath from your frost. You brought a drought to the garden that disintegrated to nothing the delicate dahlias, and turned bright green grasses in dried hay.  You made a president out of a buffoon, and enemies out of friends, but you aren't the only year to do such things.

You were also gentle at times, like a mother whose love is undying yet imperfect. You gifted me with roses in November and gave me new friends when I wasn't looking for any.  You showed me meaning by being the year where I finally was able to sleep a night or two without having those awful recurring nightmares—that old dream repeated over a thousand night in a thousand pain.  Slowly, you started healing those old wounds of yesterdays and began erasing the faces of my ghosts-tormentors.  You brought me onto the garden that is here, and made me believe I can.

2016, before I met you I was afraid to dream again, but you were the year that showed me how the world can unfurl its brow if only I'd let it.  You  taught me to not look back, because we do not walk towards the past.  I became something better, holier even as I drew closer to the Light.  Even when others were cursing you for your darkness, you were planting seeds of hope, and drawing up maps for me to follow the light.  You gifted me with the pure pleasure of hours of leisure in the company of birds and gave me roses with which to embellish the old tarnished urns of my souls.  You gratified me with the ability to travel and see the world with breath in my lungs and fervor in my heart.

2016, I saw you as one who sees through a window blinded by fog and ices on the other side. Equal parts anxiety and joy made up your hours.  You made me appreciate more the old, the dear, the irreplaceable, and allowed me to spend more time with those I love and treasure. 

2016, I hope the events that took place in my life on those last hours of your course aren't a prediction of what's to come.  I don't want to see it that way.  But, like with any other year in our lives, you were composed of time.  And time is fleeting – time is a moving thing.  It never stops.  Like life itself, time is a dragon-like creature that does not knows how to forget nor forgive.  And we're not Tristan or Margaret the Virgin.  We're no dragon slayers. We cannot won't you.

Some years can be as relentless and vicious as a tornado; violently rotating columns of air spinning without control, but some years can be sheep's wool, soft to the touch and comforting.  I want the year 2017 to be more like a sheep, less like a tornado, and if it is to be a tornado, let it be the impetus of one and not in its effect.

Farewell, 2016