Saying Goodbye to 2024

As I sip my coffee at The Henry - yet another addition to 12South in 2024 - I feel kind of numb to the fact that another year is in the books.  Suddenly, we're almost a quarter of the way through the 21st century.  

It seems only yesterday that I lay under a blanket with our ultimate frisbee playing friends on a grassy bank by a creek in Gatlinburg in freezing temperatures, staring up at the stars at midnight, as we rang in the year 2000.  That was 25 years ago.  Before Jude and I got married.  Before we had the boys.  Before I lost my mom.  Before we lost Carley Meade.  

The eternal question, of course, is where did the time go?

I always have trouble categorizing a year in review.  Was it good?  Was it bad?  A little of both?  If I'm lucky, more good than bad and I guess that would be my though about 2024.  Mostly good, a little bad or, to be more precise, a little sad.

I lost David Easterling in September to a glioblastoma.  He's my first close high school friend - the first member of our group - to leave us.  There's something reassuring about knowing a close friend from whom you've drifted away a bit is still there, available for a random text exchange about Kentucky/Tennessee basketball, Cardinals/Dodgers baseball, or REM.  Always a clever, funny text.  I'm sad that's gone.  

I lost another lion, too, when Don Smith died.  I wrote about him earlier in the year.  He was the heart and soul of Manier, Herod, Hollabaugh & Smith - my first job as a lawyer - in the mid-1990's when I worked there.  An outsized personality and an original, if there ever was one.

For the fist time in my life, I have multiple people fighting various forms of cancer, and I think about them, literally, every day.  Gary, Scott, Reid, Kelli, Christa, and Lance.  How?  Why?  It's unknowable and that's beyond scary.  Sometimes, life is such a struggle, so hard and seemingly unfair.  

Work has been, well, work.  I stayed busy, as I should at this stage of my career.  Mediations and divorce cases.  Complicated, high asset cases and other cases that were not as complicated that I chose to take because I liked the clients (or their families) and wanted to help.  

Andrea, the associate on whom I took a chance when I hired her two years ago, left to work for a firm in Nashville, which was a bit disappointing at the time.  In the end, though, it probably was the best move, for her, for me, and for our law firm.  I'm still looking to replace her with the right person.

As a family, we went to Sewanee a couple of times.  My home away from home.  We traveled to Santa Rosa Beach, FL.  My other home away from home.  We also went to Chicago for the 4th of July.  A great trip where we stayed in a penthouse condominium downtown.  Joe and I traveled to Cooperstown, NY, for a week of baseball and multiple visits to the MLB Hall of Fame.  It was a trip we will never forget.  JP and I flew to Raleigh, NC, and stayed nearby in Cary, NC, when MBA's cross country team ran in NXR (Nike Cross-Country Regionals) for the second year in a row.

For baseball, JP and I traveled to Knoxville for a weekend last summer and stayed with Sarge and Jennifer.  In middle Tennessee, the boys played baseball or soccer (Joe) in various cites and towns (Mount Juliet, Murfreesboro, Smyrna, etc.).  For cross country (JP), we traveled to Louisville, KY, Owensboro, KY, Danville, AL, and to Huntsville, AL.  

The boys stayed busy and healthy which, of course, is a blessing.  They're happy, well adjusted, doing well in school.  Also, a blessing, and something I don't take for granted, not for a minute, particularly when I see so many children in my cases at work that are struggling.  I mean, Jude and I have the best boys, and we're so very lucky that God has blessed us with them.  It's the ultimate gift.  

I helped coach Joe's WNSL Braves in spring and all-star baseball.  The boys' run to the State Tournament run Mount Juliet was fun.  Joe played and pitched well, and coaching the boys was a blast.  I will never forget coaching the boys in temperature nearing 100 degrees and wearing baseball pants (!), as required by Cal Ripken baseball.  I will also never forget having a beer in the parking lot after Franklin knocked the WNSL Braves out in the semi-finals, debriefing with Scott McRae and Mark Erdman.  My guys.

If the fall, I took the WNSL Dodgers on their last ride.  As assistant coaches, I had JP, Wes, Benton, Cyrus, and JK from the original Dodgers.  JP was there almost every practice and game and, in fact, coached the boys in a double header in my absence one Saturday.  Coaching Joe and the other boys - Ram, Trey, Nico, Walker, George, Bennett (the original Junior Dodgers) and Huck, too - was, quite simply, the best.  Probably the highlight of 2024 for me.  

I kept running and stayed relatively healthy, which was nice.  Strangely, when I looked at my Runkeeper app on December 30, 2024, I realized that with one more three mile run the next day, I would have run 517 miles, exactly the same number of miles I ran in 2023.  Now, that's weird.  146 runs (2024) vs. 140 runs (2023).  Not necessarily the mileage I would like but, all things considered, a solid year of running, particularly when I hit my goal of 50 runs of three miles the last quarter of the year.  

I had Covid-19, again, back in the fall.  Third time was not the charm, as I felt a little bit worse than when I had it for the second time in 2023.  Jude avoided Covid-19 this December, after having it in December of 2022 and 2023.  

In the neighborhood, we lost Portland Brew and Mafiozza's, two staples and OG's, which was sad.  12South is such a different place than it was when we moved here 20 years ago.  More trendy, which is not a good thing, in my view.  

Time marches on, doesn't it?  Here's to a healthy, happy, and productive 2025.