Year in Review

2009 was not a great year. It just wasn't. It started out pretty wack. Losing someone that has been a huge part of my life for a long time. A person who was along for the ride of my life Since I was a little tiny kid with a hightop fade with no shape-up.

Theresa Sykes, my second mother, lost her battle with cancer. The amount of loss I felt was incredible and I didn't think at that time that there was anything that could shake me to my core and cause me to sit back and think about the way i viewed the world. Family I was incredibly wrong about this. I didn't know it at the time, but death would become a theme and was slowly moving closer to my front door.

I was sick as a dog at the time of her passing with walking (New-moania) and I had to drive to Rhode Island on 3 hours of sleep for Christmas (it was her family's turn for the holiday), this was one of the most treacherous trips we have ever taken up to RI. There was Ice everywhere and we saw no less then about 12 accidents, 4 actually happening the rest we saw on the shoulder or over in a ditch, after spending those days spending time with family we were back in the car back to MD, sleep for 4.5 hours collect some of the crew and then head to North Carolina for the funeral. I was sick congested and couldn't breathe (sorry Carl I know the snoring was tough that night) I was dying, and think that if i'd continued at that pace I would've ended up in the hospital. It was a horrible couple of weeks, but at the time I couldn't comprehend what my man was going through, so my health was secondary if not tertiary.

It made me think to what lengths we will go to for the ones that we consider truly special in our lives and realized that there are a special select group of people i'd wear myself down to the bone for, and I would do it all over again without thinking

January 20, 2010 my man Matt lost his Father. It was just a huge shock to see people in my age group just losing parents. Seeing that it happens so quickly and we never know when those numbers are going to be called was a huge shock. I just couldn't wrap my mind around what its' like to not be in this world, in this life without a parent. It's one of the things that I've taken for granted because i've had such strong influences from both my mother and my father as I've grown up. So I always just assumed that they'd always be there. In the back of your mind you know that at some point they will go, but you anticipate it being at like 90, old having lived an amazingly full life of no regrets and with tons of grand kids around. Little did I know this was not to be for my father.

After seeing this happen to my friends, I realized that i need to spend some more time with my pops. So my father and i hung out more, we talked about life more, and I got a much better appreciation of what my mother and father had been going through as husband and wife. Things that can't be explained but have to be lived and experienced for them to make any real sense to you. In the midst of all that, my wife and I made one of the hallmark purchases of couples lives, we bought our first home. We went through so much to get this house and we're so happy with the place that we got. We love it, and we love having accomplished the feat of buying. Without her pushing us I'm not sure we would've done it so quickly, but i'm happy that she was the driving force behind it. I must also thank members of her family for being behind us and helping out. We couldn't have done it with ya'll. So that was a huge thing that happened for us in this year and I was happy on February 11, 2009 when we got those keys. And even happier March 7, 2009 when I got 8 of our closest friends and we moved all the stuff to the house. It was a great feeling and I was happy, truly happy. I was surrounded by people who loved us, and helped us get all of our stuff in the house. I remember my pops working so hard to get stuff in and out of the truck and into the house. He was right along with us the whole way and i'll always remember that.

So after all of that our conversations started to take on a very different sort of feel. He was back to not just being a great, bestfriend for me, but also being a teacher and relating to me about the things I was experiencing. Things that he and my mother had gone through, but as a kid you just don't have the capacity to understand. I was now going through them. So my father and I were bonding on a level that to me I didn't know was possible. I loved it and cherish it to this day. I told him and made sure he knew how much i loved him, but I just wish i could've told him one more time.

The morning of July 20, 2009 at around 5:43 I found out that my father has passed away. There was a fracture in world. The ground that we stand on, and the way we see things broke and changed for me. Even today 6-7 months later I am a much different person then I was on July 19, 2009. I found that I am stronger and weaker than I ever imagined. I found that I could withstand much more emotional pain than I thought possible, but at the sametime noticed that being strong and not allowing yourself to deal with what comes along with losing a parent is that it manages to come out in other ways. Ways that i didn't think would ever happen to me. So in that way I felt as though I was weaker than I knew.

For those that know me in any way most of you have met my pops, because as i've said before he wasn't just my father he was one of my closest friends. I could tell him anything, I could share, we would laugh. I just remember being on the phone and laughing until we both had tears in our eyes crying about something foolish. As I sit here and recall this memory I now have tears in my eyes.

My relationship with my pops wasn't perfect but man we were so close, he was my man, he was my ace, if i needed someone to roll I could call on him and he'd be there, he might 15 mins late but he was there. I will always love my pops for that, and I won't ever begrudge him for of the decisions he made. He was a fantastic father and I love him, and miss him immensely.

It's amazing that honestly that is the one thing that colored my year of 2009. I had some amazing experiences to add to the list of them, and I'm thankful for them. I turned 30, and 12 days later I didn't have a father. It hurts me to even think about this year.

I feel like I should in someways be thankful for the perspective that is given when ones life is changed in an instant. I don't know if I'm there yet. So basically what I'm saying is love the ones you love and tell them often. It could all change so quickly .

Its taken me a long time almost two months to write this, but I feel that I should stop now, because it's been sort of like the year of 2009, it was long, sort of drawn out and something that shouldn't be held onto.

Bring on the best 2010 has to offer.