Choking

Ironically, the only resolution I was circling around was to worry less in the new year.

Last year was without question the hardest and saddest of my life. If I had to pick a salient emotion to characterize it, it would be worry. Worry over my father's decline and my mother's transition to living alone, worry over her finances and estate planning, worry over my job and professional reputation, over my health and my children's bumpy transitions to adolescence, my father-in-law's broken hip, and worry over what a crappy wife, mother and friend I've been recently. To say nothing about the tanking global economy and the fact that Quinlan will be legal to drive in a little more than three months. It has been a very dark time.

I can remember feeling light-hearted exactly once in the last year. Dear friends were visiting from Colorado, and shortly before my father's death, they joined us and close local friends in an all-day barbecue on our deck. The gaggle of our collective kids romped, blew bubbles and drew with sidewalk chalk while we adults poured wine freely and talked about everything and nothing.

There was nothing earth-shattering about the conversation, but the energy of the day and the rare occasion to spend time with such special and rarely-seen friends was magical, and for several hours I was able to throw off the oppressive worry that was otherwise consuming me. It was jarring to realize, just a few days ago, that this long afternoon of friends and sunshine is the only truly light-hearted memory I have of 2011. Thus, my resolution to worry less in 2012.

So it seemed like a particularly tasteless joke to learn, hours before the new year was rung in, that our dear friend in Colorado has been diagnosed with a brain tumor that needs to come out as quickly as possible. We are doing what little we can from this distance, researching neurosurgeons in the Denver area and planning for post-recovery getaways, but we are pretty much helpless.

I am choking with the unfairness of it.