2022 in the Rearview
Dec. 29th, 2022 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spiritedrinoa2022 has been a hell of a year. Of the course of the year I (in rough order):
Grief
The year started off rough. Going through the holidays last year, we knew it was likely the last Thanksgiving and Christmas we'd have with dad. He wasn't responding well to chemo, and after nearly every session, he'd have complications days later, and it just got harder as the cancer started to spread to his brain and they could just treat the spots, essentially leaving spots in his brain that had begun to impact his memory. I was crushed when, at Thanksgiving, I'd mentioned how my kid beat me at chess, and dad mentioned that he couldn't play anymore because of the memory issues. Dad taught me to play chess, and I'd always hoped to get to enjoy seeing him play against the kid, so that moment of inevitability hit me harder than the 2 years of slow decline (most of which I had to experience remotely via phone and zoom due to the pandemic and living across state lines). Just before the holidays last year, he had one last treatment. Bro suspected that it was likely to help get him through the holidays, and I'm happy that he was able to be there and be coherent for both of the holidays. He hit a fast decline after, passing away towards the end of January.
My grief was...is(?) complicated. There's anger over the fact that my parents both smoked since their teens. I begged them so many times, since I was at least 9 years old (maybe younger), over the years. This was ultimately the conclusion I saw coming. Not that I was or could have ever been, ready for it. So many times, I had thought and hoped they were on the road to quitting, and they never did. In the early months, I'd have dreams where I was with my family, dad is there, and when I'd wake, there'd be a few moments before I realized he was gone, and I'd grieve all over again. My aunt asked me one day what dad's favorite flower was so she could lay one on the family graves. Dad was never much of one for flowers, so it gutted me that I couldn't answer what should have been such a simple question. I guess, if anything, he liked daisies because they made mom happy.
The months that followed were filled with a lot of worry about mom. She'd been with dad since high school, and they live in the middle of nowhere. My bro & SIL live with her, but both work during the day (SIL took time off to help care for dad, but went back to work soon after). She's doing....as well as can be expected, but she had COPD from years of smoking and is on intermittent oxygen.
We just had our first Thanksgiving and Christmas without dad. The night before the Christmas get together this week, I had a dream where dad and I were at a cafe (which is weird because he was a major homebody), and after pocketing his pack of cigarettes, he sat down at the table and asked "How are you?" I directed it back at him, and received an all too familiar reaction from him that I can only best describe as a scoff. Dad was never much of one to talk about feelings, or himself. It was a nice holiday, though there was definitely a hole.
Japanese
One thing that helped me keep focused this year was Japanese. On New Year's Day last year, I decided to pick Japanese back up and commit to learning the language. One of the initial motivating factors was being able to listen into a fandom podcast I found interesting, rather than having to read subtitles as I went. Reading manga and listening to anime are also both motivating factors. I found a great course and community through ToKini Andy. I've had a lot of successes in my Japanese journey. Given that I've been able to stick to this while dealing with a major loss early on, and while working, I'm pleased with how far I've come 1 year out so far, and I'm excited to see where I'm at next year.
D&D
My husband started a D&D campaign with some family friends over Zoom during the pandemic. It became a near weekly outlet for all of us to connect with someone outside the house. It was great, we all had fun. Husband got a new campaign for us to try as a one off, and we brought my brother in on it as well.
Once things started to open back up again, our friends were perpetually unavailable, often cancelling very last minute, even when we shifted to less than weekly. So, we started up a secondary campaign with my brother DM'ing since my husband doesn't usually get to play a character, and my bro wanted to try DM'ing.
This pretty much turned into my family just playing bro's game every other week when the family friends just disappeared from constant busy-ness, maybe....Mayish? And then disconnected from social media for a month or so without so much as a "hey". So we haven't really heard or connected much with them since then, despite them saying in July they were going to figure out what times might work to play again, and 2 months ago, one spoke with husband on phone saying they wanted to play again, and they occasionally send the large group chat random memes with no context other than it's a D&D joke.
It feels sort of shitty to suddenly be entirely forgotten and left to the wayside just because they can now go places again. It's weird because they were very much as cautious as we were about precautions and keeping a bubble, and occasionally still posts reminders that COVID is still a thing, and yet...they were out going places quite a lot. Which we only know because we're connected on facebook, not so much because they even talk to us.
However, the brightside is that we've had a good time D&D'ing with my brother. I think the kid wishes there was someone his age in our group to play (family friends have a kid their age), but it's been a nice way to spend quality time with bro this year when I've really needed that connection, and he probably has, too.
- I started my journey in Japanese
- Lost my father to cancer
- Had a lockdown scare at my kid's school, where the school then failed to communicate out when the lockdown was lifted, leaving kids not picked up for over half an hour after an already rough day.
- Got allergy tested and started allergy shots
- Kid started walking themselves to school several times a week
- Continued D&D with my brother DM'ing a game, but the game husband was DM'ing with family friends fell off
- Got a mid-year raise after speaking with boss about how I'm essentially making less now than a few years ago
- Wrapped up my involvement in a major project at work and was able to shift focus back to a lot of my primary responsibilities.
- Got the house wired up to convert the stove and dryer to electric
- Found out we needed to get the stove converted sooner than expected, as it was expelling well beyond safe limits of CO while running.
- Dishwasher broke the day that we got the new stove. Got new Dishwasher.
- Kid is now too big for bedtime cuddles and storytime
- Fell hard on both my knees in early November. Bruised them badly at the time.
- Searched for some alternative to Twitter. Landed back here, and at Post.News as my primaries.
- Dude who was supposed to pave our and neighbor's driveways totally ghosted so we'll be spending another winter with shitty gravel in the driveway
- Finally put a plan in place to replace the back steps of the house this spring as soon as weather permits.
Grief
The year started off rough. Going through the holidays last year, we knew it was likely the last Thanksgiving and Christmas we'd have with dad. He wasn't responding well to chemo, and after nearly every session, he'd have complications days later, and it just got harder as the cancer started to spread to his brain and they could just treat the spots, essentially leaving spots in his brain that had begun to impact his memory. I was crushed when, at Thanksgiving, I'd mentioned how my kid beat me at chess, and dad mentioned that he couldn't play anymore because of the memory issues. Dad taught me to play chess, and I'd always hoped to get to enjoy seeing him play against the kid, so that moment of inevitability hit me harder than the 2 years of slow decline (most of which I had to experience remotely via phone and zoom due to the pandemic and living across state lines). Just before the holidays last year, he had one last treatment. Bro suspected that it was likely to help get him through the holidays, and I'm happy that he was able to be there and be coherent for both of the holidays. He hit a fast decline after, passing away towards the end of January.
My grief was...is(?) complicated. There's anger over the fact that my parents both smoked since their teens. I begged them so many times, since I was at least 9 years old (maybe younger), over the years. This was ultimately the conclusion I saw coming. Not that I was or could have ever been, ready for it. So many times, I had thought and hoped they were on the road to quitting, and they never did. In the early months, I'd have dreams where I was with my family, dad is there, and when I'd wake, there'd be a few moments before I realized he was gone, and I'd grieve all over again. My aunt asked me one day what dad's favorite flower was so she could lay one on the family graves. Dad was never much of one for flowers, so it gutted me that I couldn't answer what should have been such a simple question. I guess, if anything, he liked daisies because they made mom happy.
The months that followed were filled with a lot of worry about mom. She'd been with dad since high school, and they live in the middle of nowhere. My bro & SIL live with her, but both work during the day (SIL took time off to help care for dad, but went back to work soon after). She's doing....as well as can be expected, but she had COPD from years of smoking and is on intermittent oxygen.
We just had our first Thanksgiving and Christmas without dad. The night before the Christmas get together this week, I had a dream where dad and I were at a cafe (which is weird because he was a major homebody), and after pocketing his pack of cigarettes, he sat down at the table and asked "How are you?" I directed it back at him, and received an all too familiar reaction from him that I can only best describe as a scoff. Dad was never much of one to talk about feelings, or himself. It was a nice holiday, though there was definitely a hole.
Japanese
One thing that helped me keep focused this year was Japanese. On New Year's Day last year, I decided to pick Japanese back up and commit to learning the language. One of the initial motivating factors was being able to listen into a fandom podcast I found interesting, rather than having to read subtitles as I went. Reading manga and listening to anime are also both motivating factors. I found a great course and community through ToKini Andy. I've had a lot of successes in my Japanese journey. Given that I've been able to stick to this while dealing with a major loss early on, and while working, I'm pleased with how far I've come 1 year out so far, and I'm excited to see where I'm at next year.
- I've managed to go through 9 out of the 12 lessons in the first textbook so far (I was on pace to 1 lesson per month and thought I'd finish the book, but fell off track in July after a bad cold followed by two lessons filled with very tough grammar points).
- I can recognize about 98% of the N5 kanji (lowest skill level) and about 80% of the N4 kanji
- I know about 50% of the N5 level grammar, and 60% of the vocab (the biggest limiting factor on the vocab is the kanji readings, as there are a lot of vocab words that I know in hiragana, but haven't yet learned the kanji for).
- I've read two manga with the help of a book club on the discord server (Shirokuma Cafe and Yotsuba to!, first volumes)
- I have 5 manga on my desk that I plan to try to read in the coming months.
D&D
My husband started a D&D campaign with some family friends over Zoom during the pandemic. It became a near weekly outlet for all of us to connect with someone outside the house. It was great, we all had fun. Husband got a new campaign for us to try as a one off, and we brought my brother in on it as well.
Once things started to open back up again, our friends were perpetually unavailable, often cancelling very last minute, even when we shifted to less than weekly. So, we started up a secondary campaign with my brother DM'ing since my husband doesn't usually get to play a character, and my bro wanted to try DM'ing.
This pretty much turned into my family just playing bro's game every other week when the family friends just disappeared from constant busy-ness, maybe....Mayish? And then disconnected from social media for a month or so without so much as a "hey". So we haven't really heard or connected much with them since then, despite them saying in July they were going to figure out what times might work to play again, and 2 months ago, one spoke with husband on phone saying they wanted to play again, and they occasionally send the large group chat random memes with no context other than it's a D&D joke.
It feels sort of shitty to suddenly be entirely forgotten and left to the wayside just because they can now go places again. It's weird because they were very much as cautious as we were about precautions and keeping a bubble, and occasionally still posts reminders that COVID is still a thing, and yet...they were out going places quite a lot. Which we only know because we're connected on facebook, not so much because they even talk to us.
However, the brightside is that we've had a good time D&D'ing with my brother. I think the kid wishes there was someone his age in our group to play (family friends have a kid their age), but it's been a nice way to spend quality time with bro this year when I've really needed that connection, and he probably has, too.
