I am hitting the 20 year mark for my mother’s death. In the spring of 1993, she was diagnosed with fatal colon-rectal cancer. She had already been in pain and bleeding for nearly a year.

She did not go seek medical help earlier because she believed we couldn’t afford it.

In the end, even with health insurance, her death in 1994 still cost us nearly $200k and put father into bankruptcy after her death.

I’m thinking on these admittedly morbid things as the very positive new year begins for me. 2012 was no picnic; I had a lot of health issues myself and finishing grad school was a depressing slog and I put several “important-to-me” projects on hold. Those hurdles are behind me, and I have great plans for my site on teaching personal project management and for my writing career. I’m not afraid to optimistic!

Being haunted by 1993, though, does show me in some important ways how empty 2013 is. Both of my parents are now long dead. The house we lived in I haven’t even driven by in over five years (when it used to be an annual ritual). I have only the barest few pieces of furniture and a few kitchen utensils that belonged to my mother, and even fewer tools that were my father’s.

That doesn’t mean I can’t fill this year up, though. There will always be an empty space in my life, a huge chasm of one, but then there is the rest of my life which is mine to create. I don’t think “moving on” is about filling up that chasm or pretending it isn’t there by driving around it, so to speak. Our work is to build bridges over it, respect it, fear it, hate it, and yes, sometimes admire the beauty of it.

Even empty space can be profound.