Goodbye (2025)

Nº 015

Two thousand twenty-five arrived without ceremony, under the low hum of the freeway and the bitter smell of burnt coffee. No reset button. No clean edge. It showed up already moving. I stepped into it half awake, coffee in hand, calendar already full.

This year asked for presence more than ambition, and it did not ask politely. It asked for attention to details that never make headlines. Medication times. Appointment cards and phone calls that start with hold music and end with more questions. I learned how much life runs on forms, folders, and patience.

In March, my father had a stroke, the kind that redraws a life in a single afternoon. One day, he was at home. The next day, he was not. Hospitals have their own sound—wheels on linoleum, intercom voices clipped and calm. The smell is always the same. Clean, sharp, unreal. Time stretches there. Hours feel like they lean against the walls.

He survived, but now lives in a skilled nursing facility, a place built for keeping people safe rather than making them feel known. His room is small. It has a bed that rises and lowers at the push of a button. A television that talks more than it listens. He is quieter now. Not quite present. Confused.

My mother’s health continued to slide. Our kitchen table is stacked with unopened mail and pill bottles. The house feels like it’s shrinking around her. I lay awake at night listening for sounds that mean trouble. A thud. A call. I sleep when I can.

My nephew’s suicide in January still sits with me. We had been estranged for years. Distance felt safer than contact. After his death, we found his journals. Stacks of them. Handwritten pages filled with fear, anger, and plans that never found daylight. He called it his plan for happiness. That phrase stuck. It still does. I want to write about this, but I’m not sure where to begin.

Work continued, not as an escape, but as a way to keep my footing. I returned to the Ukiah Daily Journal as deputy editor, the place where I learned how to be a journalist in the first place. I also kept managing the Fort Bragg Advocate-News and the Mendocino Beacon. Deadlines did not pause for personal loss. Stories still needed editing. Pages still needed to be filled.

MEDIUM Art Center kept moving too. We changed our name and moved into a new location, and the shift altered the rhythm of the work. The year began in survival mode, which turned into momentum in ways I did not foresee a year ago. After the new space was filled, people showed up. Opening nights grew louder and felt overwhelming at first. It feels like we are thriving now, but I know the work is unfinished, and that there is more to do.

I tried to spend more time offline because my nervous system needed fewer places to hide. Not as a statement. As a necessity. I spent whole days lying in bed catching up on missed sleep. I wrote morning pages in an old notebook when I could. My handwriting looked rushed. That was fine. The pages were not meant to last. They were meant to clear space. I should probably burn them.

Two thousand twenty-five was not about growth charts or clean arcs, but about learning to live inside the low, constant hum. It was about endurance. About staying present when escape felt easier. About learning what remains when the noise fades.

As the year comes to an end, I worry that I’m not ready to do this again, but I will do what I must.

See you next year.

-c-