I am home sick on New Year’s Eve.

This was not my plan.

Instead of playing games and eating food with great folks I am tuned into a concert being broadcast from Lincoln Center.

I turned it on and my mother swooped into my heart.

For many years we gathered at my brother’s house to celebrate Christmas on New Year’s Eve. We would eat and play and then gather around an outdoor bonfire with the stars dancing overhead.

That tradition morphed for my mother into symphony concerts in the company of my sister and her husband.

And then, as the years made getting out harder, she took in the concerts available to her on television. I would call her and she would fill me in on what the orchestra had played.

So I am carrying on her tradition, I guess. She would have enjoyed this concert.

On this first turning of the calendar without her, I ache with missing her as I wonder at this living of life without her.

This year would have worked her fierce heart.

The falling from the sky of her grandson and his miraculous healing would have made her near sick with worry for Miles and Brook and for her beloved daughter Margie.

The finding of cancer in the body of daughter Cynthia would have been anguish for her.

And this election? She would have been spitting mad.

I dreamt about my mother last night. In my dream, she was dying. I remember thinking in my dream that I thought people only died once. But there she was, readying herself for death. I was grateful to be with her.

I wonder: Do we die more than once? Do we leave incrementally?

The gifts of those who touch our lives sound on in Copeland and in Strauss. Stars shine over bonfires. Hearts ache with missing.

Blessings on that which was.

Blessings on that which will be.

Blessings.

Happy New Year.