Christmas 2022 blog…

 So here it is, Christmas morning 2022.

I sit on my bed between my two loyal pets, Jake & Elwood.  I don’t have a Christmas tree, and all the presents I have are gift cards from work in my wallet and a leather Pittsburgh Steelers jacket hanging in my closet that was given to my by one of my best friends a few days ago.

Other than my fan running on a nightstand in my room, it’s very quiet.  My mind wanders back to my younger years, when my sister and I would charge headlong into the front living room of the house I grew up in not a mile away from where I live now, and tear into the presents we received.  

Dinner would follow a few hours later, and we’d enjoy family time.

It was a scene repeated throughout the 70s, 80s and into the 90s when she and I were married and brought our spouses into that house where not only did we open presents there but we would repeat that at the houses of the parents of our spouses, and invariably have two dinners.

All that is ancient history now, unfortunately.

I’m 54 now, and an adult.  The only immediate family I have is scattered between here and Texas, and only one part of that family speaks to me.  I no longer live in the house I grew up in, having resigned to living in an apartment.  

In the past four years life & I took a few wrong turns and I am left on an island wondering what the hell happened.  My dad always preached to us how important family was, and now that he and mom are in the afterlife (if there is such a thing) his words are either forgotten or ignored.

At the end of the day that’s all you really have left: family.  I was lucky to have strong parents who raised me right.  Despite my underachieving nature they never gave up on my, though I have them plenty reason to at times.  They gave me all the room to succeed in life and more importantly, they also gave me room to fail.

Probably too much room, when it’s all said and done.

Finally, this holiday is one where I was hoping that I might get a little reconciliation with my sister. Things ended badly after my mother passed between the two of us. It was ugly, and it was mean on both sides.

When I say reconciliation, I’m not so arrogant or narcissistic to say that I’m looking for hat in hand apologies nor am I wanting that. I just want to have a relationship with my family moving forward, with acknowledgment that we made mistakes but that we can look past that and move on.

It’s unlikely, but I do have hope.  What’s really scary is that what happened to us was very similar to the falling out that my dad had with his brothers upon the death of our grandmother, in nearly a year after her passing, he himself died, and my dad‘s estranged brothers or left to make awkward, apologies to my mother, sister and I.

There’s a song from the 80s by Mike and the Mechanics that has a line that goes: “it’s too late when we die to admit we don’t see eye to eye”.  The song refers to a son’s relationship with his father that was somewhat tumultuous, it can apply to siblings as well.

I only bring that up because in the last two years I’ve had a couple of serious health scares and it confirmed the fact that even I will reach my eventual expiration date, and I don’t want to pass from this life with things between my family & I left undone.

I admit that I burned a few bridges when my mother died with my sister, but I don’t believe that they’re completely ashes at this point. If there’s anything I wanted for Christmas this year, it was to at least have a conversation with my sister and build a path to reconciliation.

There’s still time for that to happen. It won’t be easy given that she and I are totally different people in terms of the way that we are personality, wise, but I think it can be done.  

This particular entry took a very dark path and for that I apologize on this wonderful day. But I woke up with these thoughts on my mind, and I really had to get them out somewhere.

I hope everyone reads this and reads this blog have a very happy holiday season, and a great start to the year.