The Day After

Today is "the day After" Boxing Day. This is a day I always spend just hanging out with myself - recouping my energies. It is a day when I place no demands on myself - there is a little bit of clean-up to be done and probably a load of laundry - but other than that, the day is completely my own. It has been a wonderful Christmas, but I am all "peopled" out and more than anything need some time alone.

Boxing Day was nice.

When my brothers and sisters (and I) were younger and raising our own families, we mosly celebrated Christmas in our own homes and then all got together with Mom and Dad on Boxing Day. Then my brother was killed in a motor vehicle accident. That following Boxing Day, Dad found it too painful with everybody getting together without my brother. Then by the next Boxing Day, Dad was getting over a stroke and couldn't handle the noise and confusion of so many people getting together.

Three or four years ago, my sister resurrected the Boxing Day get-together in her home. We all enjoyed it immensely. We had missed it.

But getting together at your childhood home on Boxing Day. There's a part of you deep inside that just relaxes into it - even if everything is different.

Dad is gone now - has been for many years. And Mom is in the middle stages of Alzheimer's. We are fortunate, though. The disease is being slowed down by medication and she even remembers our names. She is quite humorous by times. After a lifetime of holding everything inside, she says whatever comes into her mind. I find she laughs more now than she used to.

Yesterday we spent the afternoon just "being" with one another as we are now - creating some new memories that we will cherish in years to come.

Today I am spending the day just "being" with myself - with all of my ordinary life set on a shelf to make room for Christmas - and another day before I have to pick any of it back up. And I know from past experience that I will pick it back up slowly - do it a little differently - because I have been changed a little bit by the way Christmas unfolded itself to me.

There will even be parts of my life that I won't pick back up - because I will have realized once I have spent time away from them - that they are not really worth the time and energy I was investing in them anyway.

You know what I mean?