Lost or Gone Missing

Sometimes when I'm at work and the thoughts and words are swirling around in my head like flakes in a snowglobe, all I can do is try to write it out. Here's what I wrote on Dec 15, before things went from bad to worse.

Christmas hasn’t been a good time of year for me since the year Grampy died and Mom was so sad and she said she just wanted to go away and not celebrate it at all. She’s spoken so often of all the years when we were kids and went with Dad on Christmas Eve and again in the morning and left her home alone. Grampy was the only one left at home with her on Christmas morning. We were just kids enjoying being with our cousins and it wasn’t like we had an independent vote on what to do. We just did what we’d always done, went where the plans were. But knowing that she spent so many years sad makes me sad. Every year I find less joy in this season. I don’t care about the tree, though G and the kids have made it beautiful. I could care less about hanging ornaments and tinsel and decorations. I like the carols, and that’s about it. I never really thought of myself as a scrooge, or as someone who got depressed around the holidays, but that’s how I’m becoming. Ok, not miserly like Scrooge, and maybe not truly depressed, but certainly not able to take in any of the joy that’s supposed to be so prevalent.

So if Anyone wonders why I was a little extra pissy, maybe unreasonably so, there was more going on than met the eye.

I found out on the 24th that a friend of mine, a girl I've worked with for almost 20 years, has breast cancer that's advanced quickly since a recent mammogram. She's younger than I am, has two teenage sons, and is seeking surgical opinions.