G'morning

Last year we had party on New Year's Eve. There was no Phil/Dead show, and no out-of-town friends or houseguests. It was very, very, fun.

The dance party gave us an opportunity to ring in the year with good friends who, having no interest in meandering jam bands, we'd never been able to spend NYE with.

I hung a pretty gold bag filled with little slips of paper by the fireplace and invited folks to burn their burdens by writing their troubles on the papers and throwing them in the fire.

I had several ideas for what I wanted to burn, but at first I was busy being a hostess and then I was a hostess who had been drinking... so I didn't get a chance until a few minutes before midnight. The burden I burned was a hastily scribbled "fear".

I had become increasingly fearful of a recurrence of cancer. I guess that one woman's fear is another woman's premonition.

The longer I went while maintaining my NED (no evidence of disease) status, the more convinced I became that I wasn't done with cancer (or that cancer wasn't done with me).

I don't know what other folks burned, but most of the little slips of paper were gone by the end of the night.

This year I plan on kissing Eric at midnight, just like the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that...