Jesus That's A Lot Of Candles on The Old Cake Fella

Santa VS Jesus
Originally uploaded by clownfire.

So Merry Christmas,

It's about 2am, I'm at my mom's and I find myself sitting in my boxers with compy in lap, watching televangelists, eating cashews and blogging. I bet 15 years ago tonight as I was over dosing on pre-Christmas excitement I wouldn't have guessed I'd be doing this. I might have guessed the cashews, I've do love a x-mas cashew.

So... yeah it's Christmas huh? I could barely tell. This has been in no uncertain terms, an Un-Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I certainly expected some strangeness given that this is the first Christmas since my dad died but this isn't what I thought it would be.

By and large this day has been met with the same mixture of disbelief and sadness of all the other 'bad days'. However, don't turn your back on serious issues like these. They have a way of striking unannounced.

I was sitting in church feeling normal (sleepy) and then it occurred to me, my dad isn't going to be handing out the presents tomorrow in his bath robe. And just like that it got me. That stupid bathrobe. A seemingly arbitrary, unimportant minor detail of a pretty ordinary memory humanized him for a moment.

However, it's not what you think. While tears did begin to swell it was bittersweet. On the one hand these moments of reality are painful and frustrating but on the other hand, for the first time in a long time I remembered and pictured my dad as the guy I remembered for the other 29.5 years of my life. No tubes, no chemo, no suffering, no dimensia, just a happy healthy guy who was having Christmas morning with his children and grand children. Still at that time very much immortal. I like that image of him a lot better.

Some images I'll never remove from my mind but it's also good to know that some images I'll never remove my mind.

Anyway, Merry Christmas everyone and... welcome back Dad.