BAH HUMBUG!!

Okay, that’s not exactly what I think, but … But it’s difficult not to. The whole recession thing has been hitting us hard around here, and as cheerful as I try to be, it just makes everything feel wrong. Add that to the rest of everything else that’s happened this year, and, well, I’m pretty glad that 2008 is almost at an end.

I remember about this time last year, sitting down and talking to my husband about life and about how fortunate we were. Neither of us had really lost anyone that close to us; we had our health and our boys were thriving. I think about that sort of thing now, and it makes me want to cry. It’s ironic, how fast things can change, isn’t it?

I mean, we knew that my husband’s mom wasn’t well. The poor woman had suffered with COPD for years. We just didn’t expect her health to take that sudden of a turn last summer, and we lost her the day after my husband’s 33rd birthday. He’d gotten to travel to Tennessee to see her; he’d spent a few days with her when she’d seemed to be doing better. He got to talk to her, to laugh with her, and to tell her that he loved her, and while he wasn’t there at the end a couple days later, he is able to retain some really beautiful memories.

We lost a couple dogs this year, too: dogs that were a part of my family, whom I loved dearly. I feel as though bits and pieces of me have been falling away, and I wonder just how much more I have, right?

And maybe it’s just this time of year that tends to make me feel this way, though it’s harder to combat now than normal. Nothing brings home the hardships that are facing people more than watching as their co-workers are handed pink slips, which happened a couple weeks ago. Pay cuts and the like have been rampant where my husband works, and the idea of actually going out and looking for work? Sure … too bad no one’s hiring, right?

Which makes Christmas a hard season, not just for us but for so many families around the USA, if not the world. I commiserate with those who are having trouble just making ends meet, who hear their children, oblivious to this state, rambling off the laundry list of toys they want from Santa this year. I know the frustration and even guilt that you cannot buy them everything they’re asking for. Heck, I know the frustration and guilt that you cannot buy even one of those things for them. Thank God for guardian angels, right? I have one. I can only pray that everyone else does, too.

I tell myself that the most important thing is to hold those you love close to you; that that, of course, is the most important thing at this time of year. It’s so easy to get lost beneath the commerciality that has become synonymous with Christmas. Too bad that it’s very little compensation to me.

So I ask you all, whoever reads this, to take a moment to consider those things that are important to you; to thank God or whatever entity you might believe in for the things you have. Take a moment to smile at someone who looks like they need it because you have no idea just how much something like that might mean. If you do these things, you’ll help me more than you know. You’ll help for me to renew my own flagging belief in the good of men, and that, I think, is the greatest gift of all.

{originally posted on DA …}