Journal Entry 12.19.24 and One Year Later

I found this journal entry from a year ago and left it as it was...

Yesterday’s drive to Cleveland… Just another stretch of highway, gray skies stretching endlessly ahead, and the kind of dreary, overcast day that makes everything feel a little heavier. It’s Cleveland after all…

It was the quiet kind of weight, the kind that doesn’t announce itself but settles deep in your chest and refuses to leave. This happens often on longer drives.

I was listening to my Spotify Wrapped from 2024… a crazy mix of music, to be expected… when, bam, “A Long December” by Counting Crows came on. It’s a song I’ve heard hundreds of times before, but yesterday, it felt different—like it had been waiting for me. The piano, Duritz’s raw voice, and that lyric: “Maybe this year will be better than the last.”

It hit me like a wave. I didn’t even realize I’d taken my foot off the gas until I was coasting toward the shoulder of the road. I pulled over, put the car in park, and just sat there, staring at the muted world around me. The clouds hung low, heavy and full of a rain or maybe snow that hadn’t yet fallen.

The song played on, each lyric digging a little deeper, unearthing feelings I thought I’d managed to bury. This song has played hundreds of times… Grief, hope, and something in between—an ache that didn’t have a name. The line about “the smell of hospitals in winter” tugged at a thread I hadn’t dared to pull, and before I knew it, the tears came.

It wasn’t just sadness, though that was part of it. It was the slow realization that this endless, gray December I’ve been living in might not last forever. That maybe, just maybe, there’s truth in that fragile hope the song offers… that this year could be better than the last. It’s not a promise, but it’s enough to keep going. Enough to stay on the road, even when the destination feels unclear.

I sat there for a bit… The sky stayed overcast, the wind still carried a chill, and the road ahead stretched on as far as I could see. But something shifted in me. It wasn’t a revelation or a sudden burst of clarity, just a quiet reminder that the passage of time carries with it the possibility of healing. I have reason to believe ❤️

A bit of irony… On my list of 100, it’s song 57—Mary’s age when she passed.

One year later, I came back to this entry.

I remember that drive more clearly than most of the days around it. Not because anything dramatic happened, but because something in me slowed down enough to notice what was already there. At the time, I thought I had simply been caught off guard by a song, by a lyric that landed harder than expected. I didn’t yet understand that what stopped me wasn’t just grief, but permission.

Up until then, my instinct had been to keep moving. Stay busy. Stay useful. Let momentum carry me through whatever I didn’t yet have language for. Life allowed that, for a while. Work still needed attention. People still needed answers. The road still stretched forward whether I felt ready or not.

What I didn’t realize then was how rarely I had allowed myself to pull over.

That day outside Cleveland, I didn’t change the song. I didn’t push through it. I didn’t tell myself I’d deal with it later. I stopped. I listened. I let the moment have me. At the time, it felt like weakness. Like I’d lost control of something I’d been managing carefully.

A year later, I see it differently. That was the first time I trusted myself enough to stop running.

What followed didn’t come in big breakthroughs. It came quietly. In small recalibrations. Learning how to sit alone without filling the space. Learning that grief doesn’t always arrive as tears. Sometimes it shows up as exhaustion. Or impatience. Or the sudden urge to be anywhere but where you are.

I’ve learned that hope doesn’t arrive fully formed. It comes in fragments. In mornings that feel slightly lighter. In laughter that surprises you. In the ability to make plans again without immediately bracing for loss. When I think about that line now, “Maybe this year will be better than the last,” it doesn’t feel naive anymore. Back then, it felt dangerous to hope. As if wanting better might somehow erase what had been lost. I understand now that hope doesn’t replace grief. It lives alongside it.

This year didn’t fix everything. It didn’t offer closure or answers. But it gave me something steadier. Perspective. Self-trust. The knowledge that I can feel deeply and still keep moving forward. That I can pull over when I need to, and get back on the road when I’m ready. I’ve driven that same stretch of highway since then. Same gray skies. Same long miles. The song has come on again. It still gets my attention, but it doesn’t undo me the same way. Not because it matters less, but because I’ve learned how to carry what it brings up. Don't get me wrong it still brings a tear or two.

That drive was never really about Cleveland. It was about learning that grief would ask for my attention whether I invited it or not. And that when I finally gave it space, it didn’t take me under. It widened me. I still don’t always know where I’m going. The destination isn’t always clear. But I trust the road more now. I trust myself on it.

That day didn’t change my life all at once. But it marked the beginning of something important. It taught me that sometimes the bravest thing you can do is pull over, feel what needs to be felt, and believe quietly that the road ahead still holds something worth driving toward.

I trust the quieter way will carry me and help me lean into something that feels like forward.