Welcome to 2012

I am SO glad to see a new year! December was horrible. Our niece died from what appears to be a ventricular tachycardia problem that must be familial. Our house was broken into and robbed the Tuesday before Christmas. My wife was bending over to pick some leeks (for soup on New Year's Eve) out of the garden and then threw her back out necessitating a trip to the ER. Ugh.

In all fairness, the rest of the year was fine. No major problems (other than the daily struggle to get grants and maintain a high level of productivity in the lab I mean) throughout the majority of 2011 and them BAMMO! Welcome to December. Ruth's family (and the two of us) are still trying to process the grief. My sister-in-law has been amazingly strong. The memorial service was a challenge as the family asked me to perform the service and the majority of the family who could make it to Michigan participated. Our niece's mother even performed two very beautiful pieces on bass and we all cried. A lot.

For me, trying to sit outside of myself and process the grief has been helpful. We were warned by my sister-in-law that the grief would come and go in waves and that's precisely how it seemed to work—one minute you're fine and trying to get about the day and the next you're crying in a heap and feel hopeless. Very difficult to deal with. It's better now but STILL sneaks up on me periodically and cripples me for a time. I see the same pattern in Ruth.

We have lost many of our family and friends in the past few years. I have attended far too many funerals in the last five years than I think I should have as a man of 45 years but this has been our reality. Most of our losses have been older family members (my 83 year old grandmother, my 82 year old great uncle, my aunt after a stroke and progressive decline, etc.) and we have lost friends who have battled with liver cancer and leukemia. Our niece was only 16 years old. She was healthy (apparently), happy, and a wonderful, bright, shining light in our lives. We live far from both sides of our families and having my sister-in-law and niece move all the way from France to within a three hour drive has been wonderful for us over the last two years. We have gone to visit them as often as we could. Our niece's birthday was a week earlier than mine and we had enjoyed celebrating together over the past two years.

Because we were the closest family to them, we were the first to arrive after she passed away. We had the opportunity to say goodbye and feel the gravity of losing her and being assured that she was gone. Even the memory makes me cry now. We looked forward to seeing her grow up and become another of the beautiful and accomplished women in my wife's family. We wanted to see her marry and have children and get to know her as an independent, fully-formed person. We know that she is so wonderful. She is tall, 5'11'', deep red hair, willowy, bright blue eyes, quiet, but intense, brilliant but humble. We miss her.

So this loss was/is the hardest of them all. We still feel the hole in our lives and I expect that we always WILL feel the hole. Shocking. I can't even imagine what it feels like for her father and mother. Everything else that happened in Dec was filtered through a numbed fog. Ah, all our valuables are stolen.... So be it. Ruth's back was painful but, once we were sure the problem didn't require surgery, we knew we could deal with it.

December was very strange for us and, moving into 2012, we know that we are irrevocably changed but at least we have hope that the new year will bring us some peace and distance from the pain. Of course we will never forget.