I can’t say Jane and I were great college basketball fans, but we read enough and watched enough to have a clue. We would watch the league tournaments, watch selection Sunday, fill out the bracket. Some years we would do unbelievably well. Other years we did not get out of the first round with anything that looked viable.

Those years we would sit down after the first weekend and fill out a new bracket. We were less interested in being right than in having teams to cheer for. We would have no real interest in Wichita vs. Virginia Commonwealth without that little boost. We would often take the 12 over the five and the nine over the eight. We liked the Gonzagas and the Murray States and the Creightons before most people recognized those programs were real.

Last year I did not fill out a bracket. I barely watched a game. I’m not sure I even watched the final. I’m not sure I knew UConn had won the tournament before someone said it today.

I didn’t fill out a bracket this year either. I thought about printing one out this morning, but my heart was not entirely in it. I watched Marquette win, caught the few minutes of the Syracuse’s attempt to become the first number one seed knocked off by a 16 that CBS gave us. And I tuned in midway through the Murray State win.

But the world remains a radically different place for me. Much of what I once enjoyed holds no interest for me. And I really do need to find ways to relax and put my mind in neutral–or at least on things other than the work that needs to be done.

I saw the beginning of that last week when I got to two high school tournament games.  I screamed myself hoarse in the regional final–not that it got Westport past Cathedral in the end. And the Red Sox…

But I am not sure the old passions will ever return fully. In one of my grief groups, we talked about the “new normal.” Any encounter with death changes you. The morning after I covered my first three fatal accidents found a very different person than I had been the night before. I did not know those people.

There were lots of deaths after that. Some were people I barely knew–others were students and athletes in my classes and on my teams. John Donne talks about each death diminishing him. While those deaths did not make me less, they did change me–some very greatly.

But none of those deaths changed me anywhere near the way Jane’s did–and does. I have only recently begun to taste my food again. That is how deeply the trajectory of my life has changed. It is not just what I enjoyed doing that has changed. My vision of my life, my goals, everything is different.

Any day that I do not make some progress against this disease feels like a failure. Every day I see progress seems like a small success. But I also know there have to be breaks in there somewhere. I just have to remember to take them.