2016 really broke our hearts, but the year wasn’t all bad
Some things that didn’t stink about 2016 ...
Perhaps we should have known you were going to break our hearts, 2016.
Just 10 days together and you had already snatched David Bowie. As if that hadn’t been enough of a clue, you also robbed us of Glenn Frey of Eagles fame and Paul Kantner of both Jeffersons Airplane and Starship. You took Alan Rickman that month, too.
Even Abe Vigoda, perennially pronounced dead year after year, was dead.
But you were just getting started.
One by one, our giants fell. Antonin Scalia. Nancy Reagan. Patty Duke. Prince.
You took Muhammad Ali and Gene Wilder in
summer.
As you grew older and colder, you also grew crueler, killing off Arnold Palmer, Leonard Cohen, Gwen Ifill, our TV parents Florence Henderson and Alan Thicke, our hero John Glenn. George Michael was gone on what turned out to be his last Christmas.
And, oh, this week you dealt the cruelest blow of all when you took out Carrie Fisher, the fiercest and funniest princess general of the galaxy, and then, the very next day, her unsinkable Hollywood legend mother, Debbie Reynolds.
We were so over you. Losing famous folks was by no means the only horrors you wrought. In New Mexico, we wept often over the violence in our communities, especially when it resulted in the loss of children. Remember? Jayden Dayea, 1. Victoria Martens, 10. Nhi Nguyen, 11. Carmen Esmeralda Rivera Nevarez, 10. Ashlynne Mike, 11. Then three more last month — Mascarenas siblings Elijah, 5, Olivia, 6, Ian, 9.
All the while, you let wars rage, refugees suffer, terrorists terrorize, Russians hack, Congress sulk.
You popularized words like “xenophobia,” “altright” and “post-truth.”
You turned Aleppo into hell and social media into a cesspool of hate and fake news. And then you gave us the most brutal, bitter, bizarre and seemingly endless presidential election, the result of which has done little yet to mend the wounds of a divided nation.
The new year cannot come soon enough.
But, yes, I know what you’re going to say. Don’t blame you. Things happen in their own time, which just happened to be 2016.
And yes, things happen sometimes because we let them, because we make them, because we did not do enough to do better.
Maybe it’s us we have to blame for this mess, not you.
And, yes, maybe you weren’t all bad anyway — maybe we weren’t all bad.
We had the Olympics and those amazing athletes twirling and leaping and running and swimming and winning, if not the gold medal then our hearts.
We had the Chicago Cubs’ first World Series win in 108 years and the University of New Mexico Lobos’ fourth bowl victory ever.
We have an Ebola vaccine and a fighting chance against ALS now that the gene responsible for the disease has been identified.
This year, “Hamilton” won 11 Tony awards.
This year, more than 20 million Americans have health care coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In New Mexico, that translates into a drop of the uninsured rate from about 20 percent in 2010 to 14.5 percent. No matter the politics and the glitches, that’s a good thing.
This year, a woman made it closer than any other in U.S. history to the highest office in the country. She didn’t win, I know, but that doesn’t negate that milestone, nor does it diminish the empowerment she helped inspire in millions of women and young girls.
This year, Standing Rock stood against the Dakota Access Pipeline and won — for now.
This year, the unemployment rate is the lowest in 10 years.
So, yes, thank you, 2016, for all that. Thank you for Pokémon Go (or not), the laughing woman in the Chewbacca mask, Carpool Karaoke, cauliflower rice, for Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, protesters and police, books, independent newspapers.
Thank you for “This Is Us” and Season 3 of “Transparent.” Thank you for “Zootopia” (so much more than a kid flick).
Thank you for cold craft beer and hot green chile, both made in New Mexico. Thank you for beautiful sunsets and breathtaking vistas, for family and friends.
Thank you for leaving us Betty White.
You have not been easy to love, 2016, but even when you took away those icons we loved you reminded us of their gifts and their genius and why they mattered to us. Thanks for that, too.
So as Bowie might have said, it’s time to put on our red shoes and dance the blues. And so we shall, into the new year.
UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@ abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg. Go to www. abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.