So. This is the other side of Christmas. It makes me sleepy, but not tired. Thank goodness I've got two weekends and a full week before I have to go back to work.
Christmas was... I guess it kind of just 'was'. Things were quiet, and hard sometimes, but all right. We made it through, and no one tried to force anyone to be all jolly when they weren't in the mood for it, which was a serious blessing. I don't think I would have taken that particularly well. The hardest parts were being at my inlaws place, with all of the Academic Husband's cousins around. All around and about the same age as Caelin, all happy and, well, alive. Which of course is a good thing, it just made me miss what I don't have anymore, which was hard. Also, my aunt and Caelin's sister decided that I should have the cowboy hat that was passed down to Caelin from our Grandfather, and it was given to me as a Christmas present. That almost started me crying. I'll have to post a picture of the hat sometime.
I didn't get much of a chance to be online over Christmas, and I kind of kept myself from posting or commenting, since I really didn't feel like being the person who brought people down. It was kind of like that in person too... I just let everything be quiet and kind of happen around me for a few days, and stayed on the periphery. Low-key.
Things still haven't hit. I can feel it somewhere in the background waiting to smack me upside the head, but I've been pushing it off and pushing it off since it happened. I don't know if I can say that I 'like' my denial, but I just haven't been ready to let go of it yet. I know it will happen when it does, whether I want it to or not. I'm just trying to be patient with myself right now.
I probably should be cutting this since it's getting a little long, and I'm about to get politely preachy, but this is important enough to me that I hope you'll all indulge me this time, since I'm usually nice and kind to flists, cutwise. For anyone this refers to, please don't take it personally, or as though I'm lecturing you or trying to guilt you, just as a soft and gentle plea.
If you smoke? Please try to stop. I'm marked by my experiences, I know. I watched my grandfather die at 67, perfectly healthy in every other way but for the emphysema that had ravaged his lungs. I'm now watching my grandmother live out her senior years alone, missing him, and I'm trying to forget those last two days of watching him in the hospital, fighting for every breath. I think it was pneumonia that took him as well, like Caelin.
I know you've all listened to me talk about him, you know that he was only 30. He'd smoked for half his life, and between that, his asthma, and the fumes from the pulp mill in the town he lived in, the way he wheezed when he talked, he sounded like a man twice his age. We've been told that the pneumonia that killed him was exacerbated by the fact that he smoked, and its painful to us to know that maybe, just maybe, we didn't have to lose him.
As I said, this isn't meant to be guilt, and I sure as fuck know that quitting isn't an easy thing to do, for any number of reasons. But think about it, won't you please? For yourselves, and for the people who love you and want to keep you with them.
*steps off soapbox, and turns off the lights*
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