Annus horribilis
It’s not only the Queen who can have a horrible year
Here we are, tottering on the precipice between 2025 and 2026. It is December 31st, the last day of a year that will be ever seared into my soul, perhaps the hardest year of my entire sixty-one years of life.
In 1992, breaking with protocol in her very traditional role, Queen Elizabeth II, in a speech before Parliament, reflected on her personal devastation during the previous twelve months.
It was a year of family crisis. Prince Charles and his wife, Diana, princess of Wales, separated, as did Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, duchess of York. Her only daughter, Anne, divorced, and the royal residence of Windsor Castle was destroyed by fire. It was best described, Elizabeth said, quoting a correspondent, annus horibilis (a “horrible year”).
Criticized by some for her honesty and vulnerability, the Queen was lauded by others for acknowledging that being born into royalty guarantees no family immunity from life’s darkest shadows.
One of my adult sons, who within the course of less than twelve months, lost to death his grandmother (Claudia’s mom), his birth grandmother and his Mom. Shaking his head, his only words to me were: “Yeah, it’s been one hell of a year.”
It is hard to know what to do with this much family pain, and in the family Claudia and I formed through adoption, it means that pain is refracted and multiplied in almost innumerable ways. With twelve children, spouses and significant others, and sixteen grandchildren, it’s a sometimes an overwhelming weight for all of us, but especially for me as the single remaining parent and grandparent.
All of my years of training and experience as a pastor have only partially equipped me for the grief load all of us have carried in this most difficult year. I am grateful, of course, to “know” from experience what grief looks like and feels like, although usually as an observer or supporter of others in their distress. It is a different experience to address my own losses, help guide my children and grandchildren in theirs, and remain open to optimism.
Like so many of life’s journeys, especially those we have not asked for but find ourselves frantically thrashing within, I am not confident about what actually to do about it all. Every day is a new trek into the vast space of bereavement and reorientation, an adventure with no clear road map.
It’s not unlike a theological view I learned about years ago: apophatic theology. Acknowledging how finite human beings have so little to say about an infinite Being, apophatic theology holds that sometimes we can only affirm what we do not believe to be true.
So, I’m pausing this morning to identify those things about painful loss that I do not want to be true.
I do not want to deny my experience of loss and bereavement
I will not remain silent about the good qualities my wife offered the world
I do not want to prevent my children or grandchildren from speaking about their mother and grandmother
I do not want those conversations to be only perpetual reminders of loss
I do not want to fully resolve my grief, if that is even possible
I will not allow this loss, even one so significant, to inhibit my ability to flourish
A year ago this very week, Claudia and I were immersed in our joint planning for 2025. We prayerfully considered our vocational goals, our physical goals, our spiritual goals. We made the assumption, like all healthy humans do, that the year would have its ups and downs, but that over all we would come to the end of the year (today) with satisfying results and joyful surprises. This week, true to a pattern formed over the years, I have been engaged in what is now my solo plan for 2026. Like all of us, I have no idea what to expect, but I still have goals to reach, new experiences to gain.
I am told that the Irish had a tradition at year’s end, when they would open the doors of the family home so that the remnants of the prior year could be swept out while allowing the promise of the new year to enter in. I’m not really a superstitious type, but for a just a moment in the brittle cold of a Minnesota winter morning, I opened the sunroom door, where the gentle breeze tinkling of the memorial chimes invites me to release 2025 and to welcome 2026.
I am relieved, acknowledging the year’s devastations, to say: Farewell, annus horribilus.
And I am trusting, in Love’s strength, to say: Welcome, annus mirabilis.1
Latin: “wonderful year”
Hope is alive.
❤️