January

The thought, that I will forever anticipate January with happiness and sorrow has crossed my mind before. However, it just sunk in that January holds the most important, life changing events of my life.

Dustin and I wed…Tatum’s birth…Payton’s death. Our wedding was planned. While we planned to have Tatum, we didn’t necessarily plan for her to be born in January. Obviously, we never planned for Payton to dead, in any month. It seems odd. Is this a coincidence or does it mean something?

From Wikipedia:
“January is named after Janus (Ianuarius), the god of the doorway; the name has its beginnings in Roman mythology, coming from the Latin word for door (ianua) – January is the door to the year.”...

“In Roman mythology, Janus (Ianus) was the god if gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. His most prominent remnant in modern culture is his namesake, the month of January, which begins the new year.”…

“Janus was usually depicted with two heads facing in opposite directions. According to a legend, he had received the gift to see both future and past from the god Saturn in reward for the hospitality received.”…

“In general, Janus was the patron of concrete and abstract beginnings of the world (such as the religion and the gods themselves), the human life, new historical ages, and economical enterprises. He was also the god of the home entrance (ianua), gates, bridges and covered and arcaded passages (iani) named after him.”…

“He was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other. Hence, Janus was worshipped at the beginnings of the harvest and planting times, as well as marriages, births and other beginnings. He was representative of the middle ground between barbarity and civilization, rural country and urban cities, and youth and adulthood.”

Beginnings and endings. Change and transitions. Future and past. Weddings, births, and human life. In some weird way it makes sense. Not Payton’s death, that will never make sense, but that all three events occurred in January.