Christmas and Death

It's raining and dismal today, so maybe that's influenced the following, but I usually enjoy rainy weather, so who knows...

This afternoon, Theo came around with a card to be signed for the man who used to be the general manager here who's in the final stages of his battle with cancer. It's impossible to know what to write, but I hope that what I did write won't sound trite to a man who's not expected to live to Christmas.

But then you can never tell. One of our friends back home died last year a couple of days after Christmas. She had cancer and it was her final aim to stick around for Christmas with all of her family. She managed that and then that was it. Funny what the will to live will do and where it will get you.

Still, it's hard for the family, and the first Christmas without someone around is probably the hardest, I think.

When my Pappa died in May 2000, Christmas just wasn't anything like it used to be. I mean, for our family, he was Christmas. He'd do all the decorations, gently unwrap all of our old German glass decorations and make the tree look stunning, bake mountains of gingerbread biscuits with blanched almonds on top, probably look forward to the whole thing more than the rest of us. Christmas 2000 sucked without him, really. Plus, in retrospect, it's when my Nanna's dementia really sort of started to show its very early stages.

This Christmas I have no idea what's going to be happening yet, but it's the first one without Nanna. For the first two Christmases in NSW, we brought her home from the nursing home she was in after breaking her hip. It was kind of stressful, but also lots of fun, particularly with having all of the traditional Christmas food. Last Christmas, Nan was too delicate to travel, so we had Christmas lunch in her room at the nursing home. Lots of laughs, good food, all of that.

Good memories, at least, I guess. But it doesn't bring it back.

Honestly, presents, consumerism, shopping half to death, Santa, reindeers and all that bollocks be buggered. Family and friends are what really matters. Sucks that death has to be one of the major things to remind people of that, though.

John 14:1-3‘‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”