![\"Heather](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/files\/2007\/01\/Heather%2002%20050907.jpg\")
<\/p>\nOr, objects in this blog posting are closer to reality than I’d wish for them to appear.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, while I was uploading my happy weekend photos onto\u00a0this blog, I stumbled upon this photo:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s a picture\u00a0of my niece a week before she died. Not unexpectedly, my mood went from care-free to sad, then to angry and then finally thankful.<\/p>\n
I think it was just last week that I blogged about my sister-in-law being in the hospital again (with the same illness as my niece) and how fortunate I was that\u00a0I’ve been blessed not to have any serious medical issues in my own\u00a0life. However, looking at this photo again yesterday for the first time in over a year brought back a lot of memories (and a few choked back tears).<\/p>\n
The anger is still there (about how this could happen) but there’s also a greater sense of taking advantage of the good\u00a0health I’ve been given and making the most out of my life. Since her death (16 months ago), I’ve traveled the world,\u00a0entered into a new and exciting relationship, made new friends,\u00a0and\u00a0got a degree from\u00a0Harvard. I really think seeing her life cut\u00a0so short\u00a0really pushed me to live my own life to the fullest.<\/p>\n
But the reality is still there; bad things lurk around every corner and the inevitable is, well, inevitable.<\/p>\n
I very nearly didn’t post my weekend photos yesterday\u00a0(the party, the pizza, the cannoli) after stumbling upon this photo, but I didn’t want to bring down my high from the weekend. I think there’s a place for celebration and a place for mourning. And I’m going to do my damndest to give myself more reasons to celebrate. Oh, I’ll still mourn. And I’ll still deal with the shit life throws my way. But I’m not going to let these things stop me from making the most of the one life I have.<\/p>\n
Ugh -this posting has become way too “Lifetime TV special featuring Nancy McKeon and Meredith Baxter Birney”. Tomorrow will be\u00a0more “Golden Girls” – I promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Or, objects in this blog posting are closer to reality than I’d wish for them to appear. Yesterday, while I was uploading my happy weekend photos onto\u00a0this blog, I stumbled upon this photo: It’s a picture\u00a0of my niece a week before she died. Not unexpectedly, my mood went from care-free to sad, then to angry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}