Remembering Scott

In honor of Scott's "birthday season," I am launching a fundraiser for the Pheo Para Alliance, which supports patients and families battling the rare cancer that Scott had. The night that Scott and I realized how few effective treatment options there were for pheo/paras because of how rare it is, and how bleak the prognosis was, was one of the darkest moments of my life. Nobody should have to go through that, and nobody should have to feel alone when they find themselves on that journey. The Pheo Para Alliance provides excellent information and resources for patients and caregivers, including their Centers of Excellence program which helps patients identify the nearest hospitals that specialize in treating this rare cancer. They provide a supportive community for patients and families and connect them with researchers and medical providers. They do all this with extremely limited funding, with a team of dedicated and resourceful volunteers whom I've gott...

“It turns out life isn’t a puzzle that can be solved one time and it’s done. You wake up every day, and you solve it again.” – Chidi Anagonye, The Good Place It's been 18 months. I miss him so much. After the one year anniversary, the monthly anniversaries started feeling less acute, to the point that I didn't remember what day it was last month until it was almost over. I think that's a good thing, because I don't want to dread the 17th of every month like I did last year. But today hit harder. I'm still living with the trauma of Scott's illness and death, and I will carry that for the rest of my life. Something inside me became irrevocably broken when I lost him, and yet I've somehow learned to keep moving in life, mostly because I have to and also that's what I promised him. My house journey seems to have aligned roughly into 6 month phases. One year ago (6 months after I lost Scott), I was buying this house and wondering if I was ready to...

Around this time a year ago, I was looking at Zillow as a distraction (as one does) and saw a listing for a house near my work. I was 6 months out from losing Scott, and my plan had been not to make any major life changes for the first year. But something about the house felt compelling and I decided that I should take a look at it. Two days later, I saw the house. I was sort of hoping that there would be something obviously wrong with it so I could go back to my daily life and not have to confront any potential big decisions. But the house and the neighborhood seemed lovely, and for the first time in two years I felt excited about something. I spent the next few days in a frenzy of research and thinking about what I wanted to do.  A week after I first saw the listing (with no idea that I was about to buy a house), I went under contract. The day that I signed off on the offer, I went to visit Scott and asked him to let me know if I was doing anything too crazy. I wished so much tha...