Year in Review: Death and Life

Though many, many things happened to us in 2013, only two themes to the year really stick out for me: death and life.  Everything else seems so utterly secondary as to be laughable.  And that includes a trans-continental move.

First, the tough part, death.  This year I lost three people I count as friends, and who left this life tragically young.  One friend to cancer.  One to terrorism.  And one to an accident.  These were all friends of varying degrees.  I worked with Melissa for over a year, took a class with Anne for two months, and had known Avishek since he was born.  But the varying levels of friendship had no effect on how their deaths felt to me, both at the moment I heard about them and now, months later.  Utterly dumb.  Empty.  Pointless.  And in the end, just deeply sad.  I’ve lost friends before, but this was the first year I lost so many, all younger than me.  I take no lessons from these deaths, feel no need to cast a “cherish every moment” platitude.  These were my friends, and they are no longer here.  I will never see them again.  My life is poorer for that.

But in the midst of all this death there was one, amazing, joyous, ongoing moment of life.  My son was born.  The son we never expected, and who we love with feelings I never knew I had.  Our boy is now almost nine months old, and in every laugh, temper tantrum, snuggle, and fall he embodies to me life itself, pure and undistilled, utterly innocent.  He’s growing too fast and yet not fast enough: I want him to stay this way forever, and yet I want him to grow so we can share so much more.  This continues to confuse me, but (luckily?) his waking moments offer few moments for reflection, as we’re too busy trying to save him from any number of banal hazards our home holds (This morning?  A small piece of plastic he found on the floor and just *had* to eat.  Sorry kid.)

So that’s it.  2013.  So much happened this year and yet in the end, four events really defined it for me.  And somehow, despite the sadness, I leave this year with one grand, overall feeling.  Here’s the platitude: we are blessed with life.