Of Holidays and Heartache

I have tried very hard lately to ignore a growing pain in my heart. This is the second Christmas that will pass since my dad died. Last Christmas I must have still been numb or something because I got through Christmas pretty easily. This year it's already been a little harder. When we were decorating the tree a couple weeks ago and I dug out my ornaments from when I was a kid, it started hitting me. One in particular is an ornament that most people would probably think is very ugly. It's a blue transparent blue tear drop with a white Christmas Tree in it. This ornament always gets hung at the bottom of the tree

My parents bought this as part of a set. There were three blue ones and three that were yellow with green trees in them. They were bought to put on the tree for my first Christmas so they could be hung down low and I could "play" with them without them breaking. My first Christmas was just a couple weeks before my first birthday so I was already getting around pretty good. Anyway, my dad always loved to tell about how I would be occupied for hours just grabbing at it and hitting at it to make it move. He was always amazed that a child less than a year old could concentrate for that long.

Then, it hit me again at the grocery store. For the last 20 years before my dad died, I gave him a stein for each Christmas. Anheiser-Busch makes a collectible Budweiser stein every year for Christmas time. They sell them in the grocery stores. Just seeing this year's sitting in the display really hit me hard. It just feels weird to not be buying those any of those. Sharon did give me some of my dad's steins a couple months after he died. She gave me about 6 of them. I wonder what happened to the rest. She didn't like them, so I don't see why she'd keep them. It doesn't really matter, I guess. I have thought about buying them every year anyway, just for the tradition of it, but really have no idea what I'd do with them. I didn't buy one last year so I'd have a gap. I dunno. It just makes me sad.