Finally got the Christmas lights up. I have been dreading it all year. I expected to see the lights and be transported back to the misery that was last year. I expected to see it all and feel it all so intensely again, erasing a year of time elapsed from the worst day of my life. Christmas 2009. One for the books. One that will never be forgotten or looked upon in a positive light. I expected all of these things, but they didn't come. I put up the lights outside with my usual frustration and fury. I sawed down the pole of the Christmas tree so it does protrude through the drop ceiling again, to my wife's embarrassment. I strung the lights around the tree and hung them on the walls. It felt good. I have always loved Christmas, like really loved Christmas. I was transformed, but not back to Christmas of 2009, but to every great Christmas I had ever had. It truly is a Christmas miracle that I survived last year, but an even bigger miracle that God mends the torn heart. It still hurts like crazy and at times I sit and stare out windows and wish Will were out there somewhere. But I can breathe. I am a fighter and I wanted more than anything to give up. This is the strength that only God possesses.
Last Christmas, they wheeled my brother out of his garage into the back of a van. Face covered, with rain falling in buckets all over us. What a way to say goodbye. I am beginning to let that go. It won't leave my memory, but lately I can think about him without getting sad. He was funny. He was always joking. We was a manipulator. He would grab onto his mom's leg in high school and beg her for money, and if she said no, he would refuse to let go until she gave him five bucks..."Anything helps" he would say. He did legendary things. At times he was larger than life, figuratively and literally. Other times he was meek and quiet, reserving his most important and delicate words for moments that really meant something. Sometimes he desired hundreds of people around and other times, he was a loner and would disappear like a ghost into the darkness. For the past year, I could only picture him walking away. I picture him now laughing as he always did and see the day that I meet him again. Gives me more motivation to finish life strongly. To keep running.
Sing.
Migrate.
To leave a comment, click on the specific blog title and the comment form will be at the bottom of the page.
