Luke

We got the news this afternoon that Luke passed away. Harrison is very sad. Luke was one of his favorite friends, and he's still processing what all this means. School starts the day after tomorrow and Harrison has been looking forward to seeing Luke and telling him about his summer.

Fortunately for Harrison, Aunt Amy was here today along with Grandma and Grandpa Labuta. Amy is a professional at this kind of thing. She helped him talk through it.

Sarah and I are sad and stunned. Luke was such a nice boy. Exactly the kind of friend you want your child to have. The only way we allow the kids to leave the house at all is to delude ourselves into thinking things like this can't happen. So when it happens to a child so much like (and so close to) our child, who was with his parents who loved him so much and took such good care of him . . . it just doesn't compute.

Our thoughts are with Luke's parents right now, and his twin brother, and his entire family.

Auto Accident

One of Harrison's best friends was very badly hurt in a car accident yesterday. We just found out he's in the hospital in critical condition. We told Harrison he is hurt, and Harrison is processing it. Harrison actually saw the aftermath of the accident yesterday while he was out with Sarah and Grace.

I'm obviously not going to use any names here, but if you are concerned this might be someone you know give us a call.

There is currently a generic article in the Ann Arbor News about it.

More to come . . .

Unclogged

It's been a while since I've written. It hasn't been from lack of news, or even from lack of time. I might describe the problem as a writer's block, but it's really been more of a writer's clog.

See, a couple of weeks (or so) ago, I started an entry about my recent anxieties. The main idea was that things are great for our family right now, but for various job-related reasons the situation is tenuous, and that is making me anxious. No matter how many times I rewrote it, it came across as exactly the sort of overly internal, things-you-should-be-saying-to-a-therapist posting that turned me off to blogging in the first place. So I kept saving it as a draft rather than posting it. Days, went by, then weeks.

To finally break the clog let me just boil it down to two bullets and delete the rest:

• Things are tough for lots of people right now. People we know, even family members, are having to uproot themselves and make major lifestyle changes on a daily basis. Despite some bright spots, this region - which has been home to our families for generations - is withering.
  
• If something happens to Sarah's job we'll be okay but we'll have to give up a lot. Some are material things, which I've come to care about a lot less in recent years (although I would really miss the view from our bedroom window). Far worse, though, is that we'll almost certainly have to move away. Far away. I can't begin to describe how painful that would be. We made the decision years ago to stay in this area because this is where our family is.

So that's it. Less literary than my earlier efforts, but at least I feel can click "Publish" on this one and move on.

Moving on . . .

Twin photo