WARNING: This is a sad one...(well, to me)

It still looks like Christmas around here..trees are still up, still have some candy, cookies and fruit around the kitchen tree...my Christmas countdown clock has been changed to tell me how many more days til our Hawaii trip...the kids have taken home their goodies from Granny and Pappy's and the silence is deafening...all the days and weeks spent in anticipation of the big day, only to be gone and over in just a few hours....no matter how much you love and enjoy Christmas Day, it only lasts for a short time...then all the memories of the day go into photo albums, get posted on FB, or just find a quiet corner in your memory bank, to be withdrawn and relived when you feel like i'm feeling right now...

... Christmas hasn't been the same since my parents arent here anymore..Not on Christmas day when my kids and grandkids are here, we are making our own memories and having a ball doing so!....but when it's me, Donna, Darrell and our kids...It's like, the kids are all here, but where's Mom and Dad? The ones who instilled what Christmas means to me today..the ones who taught me how to make my children happy with baking Christmas cookies..and Daddy, who always managed to do a little "buck dance" to some corny song...Well, yeah, ok...we got Darrell, who is always after a laugh, and he usually never fails to deliver..he would make Daddy laugh so hard sometimes that he'd lose his breath and proceed to go into a coughing fit that we just knew would kill him..ha ha..

It's been a few years now since Mom and Dad have passed away...Funny, it sure doesn't seem like it's been all that long. You never think about them being gone and how it'll be cause you really can't comprehend it til it happens..then you think..."if I had just done this"...I wish I had spent more time with them. But nothing you can do or say or think will ever change that..there are no more chances to undo anything.. I wish I could have been a better daughter to Mom..seemed like she was closer to Donna than me, but that was ok..I lived down here and Donna lived up there close by for a long time..eventually we all wound up down here. By then I was so used to not having her and Donna close by that I would forget they were...I missed Mom and Dad when they lived up North. I would count the days when I knew they had a trip planned. Me and the kids would start in deep cleaning, and i'd do all I could to make my little trailer seem impressive. Daddy always spoiled the kids when they came down. He'd take them to the store every day..and there was no discipline allowed much when Daddy was in the house! That was one thing he couldn't handle..by the time they'd leave they were rotten..lol. Mom always had some new clothes for them, maybe a toy, they never came empty handed.The first Christmas and Thanksgiving without Daddy was awful. He always wanted us to sit around the piano and sing..he always played Santa..we still laugh at how he called out everyone's name..lol. ?"To DON-NA"?...he always sing songed our names when he called them...Mom would sit quietly in a chair close by and move her foot up and down and watch ...he always acted like Christmas was no big deal to him, but we knew better...he would have a fit if we had not celebrated it.Every holiday that first year after Daddy died was hard. You know there is a face missing from the picture, one less plate to set at the table...and then, 18 yrs later, you're going thru it all over again after losing Mom...and you relive all the sadness again. You feel the emptiness that their passing left behind.....Now, they're both gone...and all we're left with are their memories. And they're precious memories. Some good, some bad, some funny..some sad. Sometimes I look at the picture I have of them together on my fireplace mantel and wonder what they would think of things today...their oldest grandson is the pastor of a church, their only granddaughter sings like a angel in a group, Donna's boy's are grown and on their own now, and she has 2 beautiful grandsons named Coen and Crossan...Darrell's boys have all grown up too and one of them loves to hunt probably as much as Daddy did! Boy, Daddy would have loved that! And Darrell has 4 grandkids, 2 boys Jameson and Landon, and 2 granddaughters, Audrey and Journey. Daddy would have also loved the fact that I live so close to the river he so loved to fish in..and that we have a camper right on the water...Mom would be proud to know that Donna, Darrell and I, love each other beyond words and get along so good. And that we're trying to carry on the holiday traditions they started with the family, so many years ago. Sadly, we can't go back and change anything, we can't call them back for one more hug, one more song, and we can't live in yesterday...we have to go on...we'll just re-live the memories...and make some of our own that our kids can sit at a computer one day and remember us by!....