"The gifts" by Stacey
Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 5:00AM Here's Stacey:
Here’s another layout that includes journaling directly from my blog. Since I try to plan way ahead for Christmas, August is about the time I start thinking about my gift list...so that’s when I wrote this blog, August 2007. My dad had been gone only two months, so my emotions were very much at the surface most of the time and I would often find myself sitting at the computer, journaling my thoughts onto my private blog. I wasn’t writing to share my feelings as much as to just articulate them. Blogging always helped and now I have these fragmented, almost random records of what I was thinking after I lost my dad.
I was so happy to find this photo of my dad from our 2006 Christmas because 99% of the Christmas pictures were of the children, and now I am much more aware of getting pictures of everyone in the family when we are together!
;)
Journaling:
Searching through photos from the last holiday season,
looking for pictures for a birthday gift for Mom,
I found these of you, Dad.
You look so alive.
I can almost smell you when I see these.
I can hear your voice in my head,
“Merry Christmas, Pooh.” (kiss, hug)
I don’t think I’d have wanted to know that this was
our last Christmas with you.
No.
Because that would have made it very sad.
But I wish that somehow I would have appreciated you more.
And shown you more love.
And given you a special gift.
I truly do not even remember what we gave you for Christmas.
I remember what you gave me.
A gift card to Lowe’s to buy the supplies for
the French doors you were going to put in my house.
I was excited about those.
We were going to cook for you while you worked on the doors.
But those doors never happened.
And the gifts don’t matter.
They don’t matter at all.
I just look at these pictures and I wish I could go back.
I just wish you were here.
I’m planning for next Christmas.
Deciding on our gift list.
Planning to shop ahead of time so we can enjoy the season more.
But you aren’t on the list.
And that breaks my heart.
{Blogged August 4, 2007}
Reader Comments (2)
Stacey, this is so spot on. So much of this could be the exact journaling on my own pages about holidays/birthdays/Father's Day. Thank you for putting it so well.
You're so absolutely right ... I would take back all the gifts. Thanks for sharing - and I love the pic of your Dad, he looks so comfortable and loving!