Happy New Year!

Well it's New Year's Eve, and I've got the house to myself tonight.  Outside I can hear the fireworks going off to honor the passing of another year.  My sister is out ringing in the New Year with friends and I elected to stay home and make chocolate chip cookies.  As I sit here typing my post the place is filled with the aroma of warm cookies -- my favorite.  So to back up a bit, Christmas was wonderful -- no, it was better than wonderful, it was blissful.  The day before Christmas my sister and I took a bunch of presents to my brother who lives in Yelm.  He's had a rather difficult life and we wanted to add some joy to his Christmas day by surprising him.  I gathered together my fake Christmas tree which had previously found a home in my room, and we picked up some groceries and showed up on his door step with Merry Christmas cheers!  He was knocked off his feet, smiling from ear to ear.  My younger brother is very much like me in that you can toss anything in a box and wrap it with pretty paper and he's happy.  We stayed at his place until he'd set up the small tree and positioned each gift around it.  He said with a big smile, "This is the best Christmas I've had in a long time."  His girlfriend was hanging back with a big grin on her face too.

Christmas morning at around 6:30 a.m. I headed to the National Cemetery to visit my mom and dad's grave site.  For some reason, this visit was more difficult than it had been in the past.  The car I drive, my Dad's big old Dodge Durango, was the only car shadowed by the dark on the side of the long road.  I stood at their grave site and placed a poinsettia on my Mom's side of the marker, Dad's had a wreath on his side that I'd had the florist deliver earlier in the month -- and as I stood there looking down something welled up deep inside of me and before I could stop myself these wracking, horrible sounds came from my body. I miss them so much -- with every fiber of my being. I wanted to tell them everything that had happened over the past few months, chemo, fear, surgery and more chemo and more fear but nothing came out but this noise that sounded like an animal wounded. I looked up, my body literally shaking, to make sure no body else was coming, and then decided to walk back to my car.  I sat in the car weeping until I saw the lights from another car coming down the road.  On the way out, I stopped by the site of my childhood friend Mary's parents, which was on the wall and laid down another poinsettia by the wreath I'd had the florist deliver for her parents as well.  It was all so sad.  My friend and I had discussed a time when our parents would be laid to rest and that time is now and it's literally bone crushing in spirit.

My mood had really shifted downward and as I drove back home where I knew my sister, my niece and my nephew were waiting so we could open presents, I for the life of me, couldn't figure out how the heck I was was going to shake the mood that had come over me.  Then I decided to call my brother to see if he'd opened his presents.  He said, "We just wanted to sit back and stare at them for a little while longer. You've made Christmas for us Angie,"  That made me smile.  He continued, "The other day I was just wishing we could have a tree and some presents and then you showed up with them.  And I wanted to have cocoa on Christmas day and it was in the groceries you brought us."  Due to personal choices my kindhearted brother has lived a very difficult life and we don't know what tomorrow will bring for him, but Christmas he had a good day and that lifted my spirits to the moon.  By the time I got back home my mood had changed and I was able to fully enjoy the day with my family.  It was the best day.

We all have our troubles, our personal dilemmas, sad times, good times and those moments of grief as we say goodbye over and over again to loved ones who have passed on.  But as hard as it is I know I have to keep my heart on the here and now and tuck every thing else somewhere close by.  It is sometimes the hardest thing to do, but in the New Year I am going to try harder at not mourning the past and to live life happier.

To all of you out there I'm wishing you the very best in the New Year and the days ahead! 

P.S. I had some good news during my chemo visit on Friday.  My doctor says the chemo is kicking serious cancer butt in my liver.  That's something to celebrate.  Happy New Year!


“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria Rilke