{"id":166,"date":"2005-09-16T09:22:55","date_gmt":"2005-09-16T13:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/09\/16\/a-year-of-extremes\/"},"modified":"2005-09-16T09:22:55","modified_gmt":"2005-09-16T13:22:55","slug":"a-year-of-extremes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/09\/16\/a-year-of-extremes\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year of Extremes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Back in 2003, while Matt was suffering through the worst of his depression, I couldn’t help but think that was the worst year of my life. But then 2004 came and Matt and I broke up. Once again, I thought that 2004 might have just trumped 2003 in the record books for worst year.<\/P>
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Now it’s 2005. And this year has just been one long roller-coaster ride. At times, I want it to last forever, at others, I can’t wait for my chance to get off the ride. On the plus side, these past 12 months have afforded me the opportunity to make new friends and grow closer to existing ones. I’ve started traveling again (New York City, Provincetown, Chicago, White Mountains, Minneapolis, Washington DC, Paris) and have realized that I thoroughly enjoy the freedom of living on my own (something I’d thought I’d dread).<\/P>
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However, within the past 12 months, I’ve also bawled my eyes out for three separate occasions. First, Matt and I ended a nearly 10 year relationship. That night still sticks in my mind as the worst night of my life. <\/P>
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Then in March, my good friend, Regina, died of breast cancer. I had to watch her wither away over the course of 9 months until the very last day when I was at the hospital with her when she died.<\/P>
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Finally, I got “the call” from my brother yesterday that my niece was rapidly geting worse. Her liver ceased functioning and it was expected that she would be dead within 24 hours. If she didn’t die overnight, they were going to pull the plugs this morning between 9 and 10 AM. So, I bawled at work, left early, and went to the hospital, where I stayed until 8PM. It was a long, long night (even longer from my brother and sister-in-law, I’m sure).<\/P>
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So, as of this blog posting, she’s still alive. But by the time people read this, within the hour, and less than one week shy of her 3rd birthday, she will be dead. (ok – here come the tears again).<\/P>
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The plan is for Paul, Heidi and their pastor to be there when she passes away. Then they’ll call me and I’ll take the subway there and then drive them back home (they’ll be in no state to drive…hell, I probably won’t be, either). My parents are going to also drive to their house and bring their two other children home. Then, Paul and Heidi will have to break the news to their 6 and 7 year olds. I suspect the tears will be flowing throughout the weekend.<\/P>
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Thank you, everybody, for your kind comments and thoughts over the past few months as I’ve written about this. I can’t even tell you how much it’s meant to me. <\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2003, while Matt was suffering through the worst of his depression, I couldn’t help but think that was the worst year of my life. But then 2004 came and Matt and I broke up. Once again, I thought that 2004 might have just trumped 2003 in the record books for worst year. Now […]<\/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-166","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\/166","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=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}