I used to find the New Year so exciting. The whole year stretched before you like an empty road, and you could run down it as fast as you liked.

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Now I look at 2011 with trepidation. This last year was all over the place, with the high of Annabel’s birth to the low of my aunt’s sudden passing.

On New Year’s Eve I said to a few of my fellow moms-in-grief “Another year. Woo.” Another year without our children. It’s hard, so hard.

I want so much for 2011. I want Annabel to grow older. I want my family and friends to be healthy. I want safety and prosperity for everyone I love. But, my ability to say that I hope these things will happen is gone. I am afraid to hope. I am afraid.

Before Madeline passed away, I would sit up on New Year’s Eve and think about the year to come. All I’d think about were the amazing things that could happen. Sometimes they’d happen, sometimes they wouldn’t.

Then last year on New Year’s Eve, all I could see was the bad. I was scared something would happen to Annabel during the last weeks of pregnancy, I was scared something unexpected would happen with my family, I was scared of everything. Looking back now, some of that happened, some of it didn’t.

I guess I am realizing that as I grow older, uncertainty is more and more a part of life. The naive optimism of youth fades. Still, it’s not in me to be cynical and negative. So even though it’s scary, I will look down the road of 2011 hoping for the best while accepting the reality that anything can happen.