New Year's Resolution: What I won't before what I will

Instead of a resolution, this year, I’ll be working from a list.  First in the list is places that I won’t be going or what I won’t be doing because of its meaning for Sam, like:

- I won’t be going to the new Taco Bell at 135 & Stones Crossing; Sam would have loved the convenience of that to school and to get his best drink of all time, Baja Blast. 

- I won’t be going to the new Popeye’s Chicken that is where the Burger King use to be because I remember the three of us hanging out at BK while Sam and Nick waited for their turn at Great Clips and that funny video we found where the guy in the BK drive up tries to order a Whopper and they keep telling him they are out of Whoppers; Sam thought that was so funny.

- I won’t go to our Qdoba without thinking of that last Thursday night before he died; that Sam and I were there in the parking lot and he was practicing parallel parking.  I can still see his face looking at me to inquire how I thought he did.  He did great, and I told him so.  He was still worried about his driving test and I told him not to be; he would do fine.

- I won’t be playing golf… period; because I learned so that the four of us could go together and that’s what we did.

- I won’t be overnighting at an Indiana State Park; we stayed a long weekend at one of the parks each Fall for the past six years: being outdoors by day hiking, skipping rocks, biking, playing football and basketball and being indoors at night playing cards and games, doing puzzles, watching TV sports and telling stories.

- I won’t be going to Great America or King’s Island and it will take “grandkids” for me to ever go to Disney World or Universal Studios ever again.

- I’ll never again see the beaches of Ixtapa, Mexico, except in pictures; that special place we visited many times where body surfing was king, Sam and Nick could swim with dolphins, the three of us on their first cab ride which was from a fancy Humphrey Bogart-era restaurant with a driver that didn’t speak English and fireworks let off from atop the Barcelo Hotel on the one New Year’s Eve such that Sam and I ran to the beach for cover from the sparks landing on the hotel grounds, and yet still many more Mexico memories…

- I won’t be going out the back entrance of my subdivision because I don’t want to go by the last place where Sam was alive when I can remember driving with him that way so many times when we were alive together. 

In time, with enough tears shed, in 2015, I’ll start the list of what I will do…