What if 2025 isn't the best year ever?

Perhaps it's a controversial opinion.

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

At the end of the year, it’s inevitable that people will claim that the previous year was a giant dumpster fire. There will be lists of all the great things that have happened and all the terrible things that have happened. Inevitably, people will look forward to the new year with bright eyes and excitement, sequins and parties, countdowns and revelations. My revelation is thus: my second parent died in 2024. I will go into the new year, for the first time, with no living parents.

And it sucks.

It also doesn’t help that a great family friend has also passed. Essentially, an uncle. I have fond memories of going on childhood trips to New York City with my family and meeting up with Uncle Tony at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, learning all about the fascinating sculptures and paintings and everything, and then having dinner at Chinatown with Uncle Tony’s wife who would order for us in Chinese. It was a reprieve from the insane humidity of South Florida, and it was so fun to experience a new place and celebrate.

Last year ended with a major death (my dad), and the year started with a major death (my uncle).

What if this year really isn’t the best year yet? In previous years, I was swept up in the breeze of excitement and camaraderie and commiseration of another year having passed and another year arriving. Was it because I was swept up in the capitalist ethos of working through the entire year and looking forward to the holidays, where I’d spend time with family and not-working? I did go through my 2024, reflecting on all the “wins” and contemplating all of the things that I could improve upon. But after my dad died and moving into this new year with the death of a family friend…maybe it’s just acknowledging that it is what it is.

Photo by Walls.io on Unsplash

Nothing is going to replace the giant gap in my heart where my parent’s used to exist. They didn’t have the best relationship, and there is a lot that could have been improved upon to say the least, but they loved my sister and I so damn much. They may not have been able to express that in the best way, but they did. They really, really did. And it sucks not having cheerleaders in the corner who would be proud of me no matter what. Who would be thrilled at me simply calling them. Who would love to spend time with me, through all of my moods. Who would want to just spend time with me—phone call, in person, texting, email. Anything.

Now, in the silence of my flat sipping water and coffee, it is a strange feeling to think about them and want to talk to them but knowing that it’s impossible.

They’re gone.

They’re not coming back.

And this is the first time that they’re both not going to be here.

I have family and friends and a life and books I’m writing and places I want to visit, but it’s strange. There is an eerie emptiness I don’t quite know how to explain. It’s like a phantom phone call—knowing that in the back of my mind or the front of my mind I’d like to call them and tell them updates, but I don’t. It’s the space of all of those conversations and moments that I don’t have but could have had if they were alive.

How can a year without my parents alive be the best year yet?

I don’t know.

Madeline Wahl is a recent graduate with an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She is a writer, solo traveler, and millennial caregiver to her mom, who recently passed from terminal cancer. Her writing has appeared on Reader's Digest, HuffPost, Red Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others. She is working on her first novel in YA Fantasy and her first nonfiction book proposal on millennial caregiving.