Jefferson Weaver • The Last Sunday of the Year

I had a particularly difficult time sleeping, what with one thing and another, and finally I just gave up.

Well before the rooster crowed I was making coffee, and since it was Sunday I decided to take advantage of hearing a broadcast message from a preacher I’ve known and admired for years prior to either of us having so much gray hair. Early morning clouds had long since covered the crisp blue-black of the night before, and the sun was arguing with the overcast about shining on a Sunday morning, the last Sunday of the year.
It’s been a ridiculously busy December, even without all the usual hectic holiday happiness. I’ve spent some time reflecting in the past few days, at least on the rare occasion I had a few minutes.
The year was a big one in many ways, a sad one in others, and quite a few more that are still to be determined.
I thought of the time I spent on the phone with a beloved friend on Christmas Day, his birthday; he’s 90, with a mind still sharp but a body that betrayed him years ago. He gave me a to-do list of folks to visit, many of whom he introduced me to along the way. He’s one of the finest reporters I’ve ever known, and a better man. He is as much a father figure and mentor as a friend, and as I stare hard at one of those landmark birthdays, I realize that in some ways I’ve had to step into his role. It’s kind of scary.
On Jan. 6, a beautiful young woman and mother who was like a baby sister to me died in a senseless car crash. She was my top advertising sales representative, true, but she was much more. She had turned her life around and was growing. All of 35 years old, with two beautiful little girls, and in an instant she was taken from us and her family. I still don’t know what to say to her mom and dad, much less her babies, so we just pray for them by name.
Months later, I said goodbye to a lady I had come to love as though she were my kin, as I tried to comfort her daughter, whom I also consider a sister. The Old Man told me when I turned thirty that the day would come I’d be saying goodbye to a lot of folks. Somehow I never really believed him, but as always, my father was right.
In the year past, we celebrated the birth of my beloved chosen grandbaby Jasmine, now with a mouth full of teeth and saying “Love Gramps”. I can rest easier knowing Jasmine’s mom is fiercely loved and protected by a good man who is a great father to Jasmine and her big sister, my Dandelion Queen. I’ve been blessed to watch their mom, a young woman I consider my own, as she starts over, and starts over well.
Across the Atlantic, my boy Simon, now 15, had to have surgery over the weekend, after months of agonizing pain and infection. When he woke up from his surgery he immediately asked the director of the orphanage about the other kids. He’s fed the younger ones for years, and now that the infection has been taken from his arm, his goal is to be back looking after the little ones. There are so many kids like him in Uganda and elsewhere. All you have to do to realize your problems aren’t quite so big is to look into the eyes of a starving child with no family.
We buried our last horse this year, a flashy, smart, sweet, high-strung paint named Taliana, ending a decade of the joy, frustration, laughter and tears that come with horses, especially rescue horses. I can’t ride or rescue any more, but there’s nothing lonelier than a disused saddle and an unused paddock.
We closed the old office of my digital newspaper outlet over the weekend. Monday we began setting up the new one, and the sign will say “Jefferson Weaver, Editor and Publisher.”
Our new place reportedly doesn’t flood, whereas the old one flooded three times in five years — four, if you count when the water lapped at but didn’t enter the front door. Still, it was hard to leave the keys behind and say farewell to what had become a second home.
The best of my team are already on board with me, and I don’t even know how to pay them yet. They came for me. It’s humbling.
I have a friend who lives in a war zone, a fellow I haven’t seen in almost 40 years, who still thinks enough to send me an occasional poetic note on a Sunday morning. We never agreed on much when he was a professor and I was a student, but we both want peace in his home of Israel, and see the slightest bit of hope for that outcome.
Things have been happening in our nation that I never thought possible: Americans standing up on their hind legs again and saying no to the nanny state, and snarling back at those who call them racist and any other nasty name du jour. We saw a good, faithful man who exemplified Christianity assassinated because he had the guts and the love to call sin what it is, without breathing hellfire and brimstone, but in a way that even his enemies had to admire. Illegal immigration has slowed to a crawl. And the enemies of our nation who smuggle drugs in to kill Americans suddenly find themselves facing the might of the U.S. military.
The morning sky changed from cloudy gray to a diffused blue, a cool winter sun forcing its way through. I noted that we needed some rain, but the sun heals, too.
I sipped the first cup and turned on the church service, the volume low so as not to disturb my bride.  One of the tickahoulas demanded a head scratch, which I willingly gave as I pondered what lay ahead.
So much going on in my family, my community, my state and nation. The only thing I figured to do was wait and see if 2026 wants to be reasonable, or if it needs to be throat punched.
What better time to consider such, than at the start of the last Sunday of a year?