Remembering
First and foremost.....
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ceria_taliesin, MY WRITING FRIEND!!!
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, legi0n!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Heading to the in-laws this afternoon. Normally we host at our house, but my SIL's parents are also coming over. I started last night prepping vegetables...trimming green beans for casserole, cutting green and red peppers and celery for relish trays. Mushrooms to quarter and slice this morning...cookies to bake (I'm sure my 3 year old will be happy to help!).
It's been kind of a weird week. I feel the holiday spirit -- feeling very optimistic and positive and feel like hugging a lot of people -- but it seems like other people around me are struggling and I am not sure what to do at times. My mom is, in all likelihood, going to lose her job next week. It's a question of whether she is forced to resign, or outright fired. This is because she actually made her employees WORK and do their jobs, and they griped about it to the company hotline (which I thought was reserved for anonymously reporting illegal activity). The environment is actually very toxic, emotionally and mentally, and this is probably a blessing in disguise....but the timing sucks. I don't know what she has in terms of savings -- she's actually a pretty good saver from having been a widow for the last 15 years.
My friend Margie is undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, a type that's an aggressive S.O.B. but fortunately treatable. Unfortunately, her white cell count dropped too low for her second treatment...so now she's on meds of some kind to increase her white cell count -- it's physcially making all her bones hurt, and she has lost all her hair, of course. The treatments ARE working, the largest tumor has shrunk considerably, after just one treatment, but the low white count keeps her from continuing the treatments. She CAN beat this, but it's like her own body is preventing her from healing it.
And then one of the ladies at work was widowed on Monday. She has 3 children, her husband was 47. The situation was exactly the same as when my father died. Same age. Same circumstances. Even the same name. It dug up a lot of old hurt. I didn't think that was possible after 15+ years. I have a pretty good idea of what the family is going through, having gone through it myself. The despair feels bottomless.
My family was very close when I was growing up. I have four cousins on my dad's side, and the lot of us would get together at my grandparents' house on all the major holidays. My grandparents, my dad, and my uncle are all gone...the estate long settled...with a few tangible reminders of those holidays, but mostly memories. I find myself missing them a lot. I am probably also missing a time that was simpler: a time of grace around the dining room table, a time of playing touch football in the street in the front of my grandparents' house, a time when I was able to eat a dozen cookies without having it go straight to my butt.
I wonder sometimes about the people that are now living in my grandparents' house. I hope they are happy and comfortable there. Love is part of the walls and the floors. There are stories in the woodwork there they will never know about. I hope their grandchildren have a play space in the basement like we did...and I hope the oldest grandchild takes time to stand on the airing deck off the back bedroom. It looks straight into the maple tree in the back yard...you feel like you're in a treehouse...or standing on the balcony of a castle. I hope there's a glass cookie jar in the pantry that holds molasses cookies, and that the house still smells like Maxwell House when you open the back door. I hope they have a chance to sit on the big front porch, even in winter, watch the snow blanket the neighborhood and the holiday lights come on in the windows.
God grant me time to get it all written down, so that to my children my father, their grandfather, is more than a guy in photographs.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ceria_taliesin, MY WRITING FRIEND!!!
HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, legi0n!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Heading to the in-laws this afternoon. Normally we host at our house, but my SIL's parents are also coming over. I started last night prepping vegetables...trimming green beans for casserole, cutting green and red peppers and celery for relish trays. Mushrooms to quarter and slice this morning...cookies to bake (I'm sure my 3 year old will be happy to help!).
It's been kind of a weird week. I feel the holiday spirit -- feeling very optimistic and positive and feel like hugging a lot of people -- but it seems like other people around me are struggling and I am not sure what to do at times. My mom is, in all likelihood, going to lose her job next week. It's a question of whether she is forced to resign, or outright fired. This is because she actually made her employees WORK and do their jobs, and they griped about it to the company hotline (which I thought was reserved for anonymously reporting illegal activity). The environment is actually very toxic, emotionally and mentally, and this is probably a blessing in disguise....but the timing sucks. I don't know what she has in terms of savings -- she's actually a pretty good saver from having been a widow for the last 15 years.
My friend Margie is undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, a type that's an aggressive S.O.B. but fortunately treatable. Unfortunately, her white cell count dropped too low for her second treatment...so now she's on meds of some kind to increase her white cell count -- it's physcially making all her bones hurt, and she has lost all her hair, of course. The treatments ARE working, the largest tumor has shrunk considerably, after just one treatment, but the low white count keeps her from continuing the treatments. She CAN beat this, but it's like her own body is preventing her from healing it.
And then one of the ladies at work was widowed on Monday. She has 3 children, her husband was 47. The situation was exactly the same as when my father died. Same age. Same circumstances. Even the same name. It dug up a lot of old hurt. I didn't think that was possible after 15+ years. I have a pretty good idea of what the family is going through, having gone through it myself. The despair feels bottomless.
My family was very close when I was growing up. I have four cousins on my dad's side, and the lot of us would get together at my grandparents' house on all the major holidays. My grandparents, my dad, and my uncle are all gone...the estate long settled...with a few tangible reminders of those holidays, but mostly memories. I find myself missing them a lot. I am probably also missing a time that was simpler: a time of grace around the dining room table, a time of playing touch football in the street in the front of my grandparents' house, a time when I was able to eat a dozen cookies without having it go straight to my butt.
I wonder sometimes about the people that are now living in my grandparents' house. I hope they are happy and comfortable there. Love is part of the walls and the floors. There are stories in the woodwork there they will never know about. I hope their grandchildren have a play space in the basement like we did...and I hope the oldest grandchild takes time to stand on the airing deck off the back bedroom. It looks straight into the maple tree in the back yard...you feel like you're in a treehouse...or standing on the balcony of a castle. I hope there's a glass cookie jar in the pantry that holds molasses cookies, and that the house still smells like Maxwell House when you open the back door. I hope they have a chance to sit on the big front porch, even in winter, watch the snow blanket the neighborhood and the holiday lights come on in the windows.
God grant me time to get it all written down, so that to my children my father, their grandfather, is more than a guy in photographs.