2 posts tagged “love”

Yes I have decided to give Holidailies a shot. 


I can't believe it's December already.  This year has flown by.  On January 1 of this year, my grandfather died after battling Alzheimer's for almost ten years.  It was a peaceful bittersweet death that brought about sadness that he was actually gone but relief that he was in a better place or out of the hell of his own body and mind that he was currently in.  Well it was peaceful until he got buried and then it became a battle over his stuff.  My father was one of six kids with five of them still living.  Evidently, they all had a lot of underlying issues with each other that came forth like lava in a volcano.  It was ugly.  There are people who are still not speaking to each other.  They may never speak to each other again.

Then at the end of January, my grandmother's longtime best friend Bud died.  They were so close that my grandmother got listed as his "lifelong companion" on his obituary.  I have no idea the status of their relationship exactly. I just know that he would come to her house every morning to pick up the paper after she got finished reading it, drink coffee, and chat for a while.  Sometimes it was thirty minutes. Sometimes he would stay until lunch time.  But unless he was seriously ill, he came over to her house at least once a day for over twenty years.  At the very least, he loved her a lot. 

So this Christmas will be one of change.  The family dynamic has dramatically been altered and it will be interesting to see the adjustments.  Who am I kidding? It will be all kinds of sad with "hey Bud was here last year"

Then again there are no guarantees in life.  There's no guarantee that the people who love you today will be around tomorrow.  Any one of us could get hit by a bus or have some massive misunderstanding that breaks up a relationship.  Relationships, any type of relationship, are fragile things and they can rot and die on you if you aren't careful. I guess the only thing you can do is be grateful for the love you have today and thank those who are important in your life for being there . . . while they are still around to hear it. 

All this means I'm a little ambivalent about Christmas.  I'm not sure happy happy joy joy is going to be it. 

I loved the Virgin Suicides. LOVED IT. So I was a little leery of reading this book for the simple reason that if you really really love something by an author, you are setting yourself up for some big time disappointment in the future writings. Well this book is pretty darn interesting and engaging read.