Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Where's My Holiday Spirit?

Christmas is usually my favorite time of year! I love the excitement, decorating, present buying, present wrapping, baking, and everything else that comes with the holidays! But this year I have been a total Grinch.

Okay, maybe not total as I did still do all the same Christmas activities, but I certainly did not have the same excitement. We put up our Christmas tree, last week mostly so the girls would stop bugging me about it. I feel just terrible!

And this year instead of goody trays I made mini loaves of bread, so I wouldn't eat all the goodies and balloon up again. I was up until 2:00am last night finishing up so Erik could take them around to his stores. It's my own fault, I've had all the ingredients for a week and just kept putting it off.

In the midst of all the holiday preparations my Grandma Uber passed away. She had a stroke the day before Thanksgiving and the doctors didn't think that she would make it through the week. I was heart broken. We have not been out to see everyone in over a year and I wanted to be there one last time to see her and have her see the girls one last time. But finances being what they are we couldn't afford it.

After the week had passed she started to show improvement. SO, I didn't feel the pressing need to get out there . We were hoping that she would hold out until we could make it out next year. A couple of weeks go by and the reports are all good.

And then I got the phone call, she suddenly got worse. She was in so much pain that they had her on so much pain medication that she was pretty much out of it. And then my Grandpa Joe had to make the hard decision to take out her feeding tube and such and let her go. The next afternoon she was gone.

The funeral was yesterday in Pennsylvania and here I am in California trying to get excited about Christmas. I feel like I am just going through the motions. Paste on the smile, give the gifts, wish everyone a Merry Christmas--over and over again.

It's not so much missing the funeral that hurts so much it's missing the last chance to say goodbye. Being LDS I know that she is in a better place. I know that she is surrounded by friends and family that have gone before and I know that she is happy. I know that she can see us, it just hurts so bad that I can't see her.

So, if my smiles seem more fake than real and the Merry Christmas greeting seems empty please understand that I am trying.

We do wish you all a Merry Christmas. May your Christmas be great and the New Year wonderful!

3 comments:

Kathy said...

Marci, I am so sorry about your grandma. That's hard. Some years it's just harder than others to get that Christmas spirit. Sometimes it just takes one little thing, though, like a Christmas song or story or someone doing something special and all of a sudden the feeling comes. Maybe that will happen for you today or tomorrow, but if it doesn't that's okay too. You just do the best you can do and that's enough, you know? Take care and merry Christmas!

Monty and Kristin said...

Sorry about your grandma. Glad you have the gospel. Hope you feel the comfort you can recieve from the Savior soon. Wishing you the best.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to hear about your loss that must be the hardest thing to deal with especially at Christmas time. Keep up the good work! Thanks so much for your sweet comment on my blog it makes it a lot easier to know someone else has been through what I'm going through because you feel so alone at times like this. Congrats on almost having your debt paid off and at the prospect of buying a house. You should move to Riverside, it's beautiful and nice to have so many stores only minutes away from your house. We have fallen in love with the people and the atmosphere here. I don't think we could ever live anywhere else. Mike knows a lot about the Inland Empire area so feel free to ask him any questions you have, he's an agent as well as an appraiser and loves to answer real estate questions. Anyhow I hope your Christmas turned out to be a good day and yea for being able to buy presents, what a blessing!