Well, so far all my blog posts have been rather depressing, eh? This one will probably be no different... sorry to disappoint. I am just getting into the swing of this, but I promise as time goes on I will be writing about more uplifting things. I swear, it's true. ;-)
This will be the first Christmas without my brother. We are also encroaching on the first anniversary of his passing.
I can't seem to get into the Christmas spirit. Last year and the year before I had started my Christmas shopping by the first of December. This year, I started today... I came home with one gift for each of my kids. I will give myself some slack and say they are incredibly hard to shop for. They really don't tell me what they want and of course, like all kids, rarely spend much time playing with the things they do end up getting.
I feel like it's all coming up so fast and I am stressed about a variety of things. For one, our house has gone into foreclosure. My husband was laid off for much of 2012 and we fell further behind on our mortgage than we ever have been. When he is working we have more than enough to cover it, but being $6k in debt to the bank makes it hard to pull out. It breaks my heart because I don't want to have to take the kids out of the home they love and possibly out of their school.
I am stressed about my health, it seems there is always something wrong with me. I really need to get back to eating right and exercising. Hopefully, I can get off my butt and start that soon. I will be blogging about it, when I eventually begin. I will post recipes and how the exercise is helping my mood and things of that nature.
For now, I need to get my head on straight and get through this holiday. My kids have been talking about their Uncle Mike a bit more lately. My youngest (who just turned 4 last month) doesn't seem to understand that her uncle won't come back. When I have tried to explain it she comes up with things like "he just needs to be bit by a vampire." That's a bit impossible since he was cremated and well, vampires don't exist. She seems to think we can just go pick up a new Michael and when I tell her we can't she has a tantrum. I kind of want to have a tantrum right along with her. My oldest was the most affected when my brother passed away. He acted out and cried a lot (he turned 7 in May). He will talk about his uncle when we visit my parents and had quite a bit to say during ThanksGiving. Just now he actually asked me to buy him a certain brand of jeans because that's what Michael wore. He really idolized him for some reason. My middle child rarely brings him up. When she does it's loud and borders on inappropriate. Luckily we are an inappropriate family so it doesn't bother anyone.
I try not to be down about it. It's been nearly 11 months since he passed away and I don't think they need to see me dwelling on it. They were there when I found out. They went to the wake. They saw me cry. We've talked. I didn't hide it from them. Death is inevitable and they will experience the loss of people in their lives again (hopefully not for a long time), I find it foolish to pretend as if it doesn't happen or that I don't hurt. My brother and I were very close and the kids know that.
The kids have their holiday concert tomorrow. Hopefully between that, more Christmas shopping (I love love love gift giving), and maybe baking some Christmas cookies I can get into that Holiday groove. Maybe I need to buy some garish decorations and just go wild?
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