Just because it was a tough year doesn't mean we can't be thankful.
It was a rough year. Watching my seven year old son awake from eight hours of surgery and anticipating his next three months in a body cast was numbing. Spending dinner with close family friends and reviewing travel photo albums with their beautiful daughter while her best friends, my daughters, were away visiting their cousins in Florida was delightful. It was devastating five days later when her father called to say she'd fallen into a terminal coma. To lose the last vestige of someone I referred to as a mother die when my godmother died in December forced me to reflect on the passing of a wonderful generation of our family's WWII era cousins. To see my mother's cousin's husband die made me wish for happier times, when we'd spend every Christmas Eve together. To hear my first friend describe how most of the black kids from our NJ neighborhood died young makes me question community in America. To learn two admired Brown classmates; one a freshman hall mate who...