Happy New 2014!

As I awake to the beginnings of a new day and a new year,

I feel the air is crackling with the sense of possibilities.

 

Let us embrace the unknown and untried.

 

Let us go forward, secure in the knowledge that we are resilient.

 

We can gain strength from pain and we will help others in their journey.

 

For we are truly better together!

 

 

Thoughts on New Year's Eve

Time is one the most precious of commodities we have.

It should never be wasted and always treasured for its possibilities. 

 

On this New Year's Eve of 2013, I hold my fresh new calendar to hung in the kitchen tomorrow and flip through the untouched months and days and wonder what this years holds for me, my family and my friends.

 

Of course I hope for only good and fantastic things to happen to those I care about and that includes you my dear and wonderful readers!  Thank you so much for all of your support!!

As I always say, I hope I help you as much as you help me.

 

Alice G Patterson Photography
Courtesy House of Turquoise

I know some people love to make resolutions at the beginning of a new year, but I prefer to try and focus on each day as it comes to me and work within those twenty four hours on being positive, loving, healthy and helpful to others.  I don't always hit the mark but I try really hard!

 

Let's put those negative events behind us as we start a brand new year and let go of any feelings that may get in our way of doing something we want to passionately pursue.

 

Whether you are cozy at home, playing board games and watching the crowd at Times Square, or getting glammed up right now to go to a rockin' party tonight, I raise my glass to you and wish you a happy and safe New Year's Eve!

A Broken Christmas Ritual

I can't tell you why but for the first time in many years, I didn't place a Christmas wreath on my husband's marker at the cemetery.

 

I thought about it.  I was going to do it.  But then I never did get around to it.

 

I'm hoping that this doesn't make me a bad person.

I'm really hoping it just makes me a conflicted human being dealing with life the best way I know.

Every Christmas since he died 10 years ago, I have made a personal ceremony out of placing a large Christmas wreath with a big red bow on his grave.  It was a healing ritual that made me feel good and I thought it also was a ritual that would let him know that I had not forgotten about him at Christmas.

 

But this year it all felt very different.  I couldn't bring myself to buy the wreath and take it to his grave.  I didn't want to drive my car anywhere near the cemetery. 

I don't understand it but I think it has something to do with the trickery of grief.; how you think you are on solid footing and then you're not.  I used to emotionally bounce all over the place in my new grief of the first few years and since then, I have been working hard to go forward with my life, stay positive and embrace happiness.  Yet my feelings shifted this Christmas.  Out of nowhere, a powerful surge of conflicting emotions washed over me.  I have to say that having this happen is truly a bummer because I don't like being sucked back into those feelings again.

Honestly, I think one reason I couldn't go near the cemetery is I just get tired of grieving and missing him and reminiscing and being the widow.  I find it hard now to think of my husband actually occupying the physical space that makes up his grave and to me it's more likely that he, as a spiritual being, hangs out wherever he wants with whom ever he wants anytime that he wants.

  

Still, my inner voice says to me that it was almost as if I was annoyed that he wasn't here this Christmas!!  You would think I would have felt this way the first Christmas after he died instead of the tenth Christmas!

But grief isn't linear and it certainly isn't logical right?
 

SNL -- Wrapping With Justin Timberlake & Jimmy Fallon

A good laugh is worth a million bucks.

 

Justin Timberlake & Jimmy Fallon on Saturday Night Live

There are a few of my friends and family members who can make me laugh so hard that I can't get my breath and I love that they have this special talent.  They are usually imitating someone or just have the ability to see life in a quirky way and I always can use a dose of their sense of humor.

 

Fortunately, there are also a few shows on television that also make me laugh.  One of them is "Saturday Night Live."  When I came home from a Christmas party this past Saturday night, I turned on the television and "Saturday Night Live" had just started airing and I immediately started laughing at the Wrappingville skit (link & video below) featuring the multi-talented Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon.

 

When we laugh, we forget about our sadness or anxiety, at least for a little while, and life seems less threatening.  In other words, laughter gets you out of your head and away from your troubles.

Check out this ridiculous yet clever Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon skit about rappin' or should I say wrapping paper and gift bags:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD5hLarHyZo

Family Dynamics

I'm sure I'm stating the obvious when I say that every family has its own dynamic and its own way of relating to each other and I think that this special form of communication developed within the family over the years is revealed in its barest form on a holiday.

 

Let me tell you about mine.  Okay at least a little bit.

 

Take 15 adults, 8 grandchildren in their teens and twenties, 6 children under the age of six and one newborn baby and put them all together in close quarters for a number of hours and what do you get?

 

One large hungry and uninhibited family all talking at the same time about important earth shattering subjects such as food, sports, fashion and children.  People's responses are made to one another on the run while moving from one room to another or just loud enough for someone in one room to hear the other person.  What can you do? 

Christmas Day was full of welcoming kisses and hugs and flying wrapping paper and little ones mesmerized by electronic games.  It also was full of lots of spinach and artichoke dip and chips and cookies and peppermint bark.

  

Oh Behold Our Family Christmas Tree!!!!

I find as my siblings and I get older that so much can be said with a facial expression or a quick gesture of the hand.  Especially when your parents aren't looking.  

 

It may not have been entirely calm, quiet or an organized Christmas Day but it was ours and it worked for us.  It was a lot of work but at the end of the day, we were happy and blessed this year to be able to hang out with each other and I thank the Lord who allowed us to be together.  

 

Whether your family celebrated Christmas or not, I hope you were able to gather and feel some family love and make some holiday memories.

Christmas Eve 2013

Have you been naughty or nice this year?

Santa knows which one, and as the song says, he's making a list and checking it twice!

On this Christmas Eve that seemed to arrive so quickly this year, I hope Santa is good to you and brings you exactly what you wished for.  Santa is one busy dude you know so don't forget to put out the milk and cookies for him!  Sometimes we leave him a nice cold beer because we know that with all of his dashing around that he has worked up quite a thirst!

Photo Courtesy of Beall + Thomas Photography

Also on this Christmas Eve, I would like to say to my fabulous readers that I hold you in a very special place in my heart and I wish you a very Merry Christmas!!  You are my Christmas gift this year for you have blessed me with your continued support and I thank you for always taking the time to stop and read Cry, Laugh, Heal.

 

I hope I have been able to help you as much as you have helped me!

Merry Christmas!

It's A Wonderful Life

This time of year I am always on the lookout for when "It's Wonderful Life," is airing on television.

I could buy the DVD of this holiday classic but that would take the spontaneity out of it for me.  I like the surprise of turning on the television and finding it already on, or in the case of this past Friday evening, I caught it right at the very beginning.

I know that it's not a diverse film, I know that many things that happen in this film are dated and wouldn't be said or wouldn't happen today but I think "It's A Wonderful Life" is popular for other reasons.  The story's core message rings true today for all of us whether or not a particular group of people is featured in the movie or not.

It doesn't matter what gender or race you are or where you live or what you do, whether you are a parent or married or single because here's the message of the movie:  each person's life has a purpose.

 

We are George Bailey.

 

We may not know the effect that our life has on another person's but rest assured it does.  Each one of us is here on Earth for a reason and our life does make a difference and touches so many other lives.  The big things and the small things that we do and do not do not only affects our life, but also the lives of many others.  Please remember this idea when you are having a bad day and nothing seems to be going right.  You are probably doing something good and you just don't realize it.

 

Jimmy Stewart & Donna Reed star in "It's A Wonderful Life"

In the movie, "It's A Wonderful Life", we see that the town of Bedford Falls would have been known as Pottersville if it were not for George Bailey and the Bailey Savings & Loan offering help to the community.  Also when George is a boy he saves his brother, Harry, who then grows up to be a War Hero, from drowning in an icy pond, and George also prevents the pharmacist, Mr. Gower, from giving poisonous pills to a customer.

But George doesn't think twice about the good works he has done.  This is just the way he is wired.  Then one Christmas Eve a large amount of bank money is misplaced and he is desperate to find it. When he can't, all he can see is criminal charges and jail time in his future.  He decides he will be worth more dead than alive and then George starts thinking about suicide.  He drives to a bridge but before he can do anything, a man jumps into the river and George jumps in to save him.  After they both get out of the river, the man reveals himself to be Clarence, George Bailey's guardian angel. 

 

I love Clarence!  He is a great character with his large sleeping shirt and talk of earning his wings in Heaven for when he first arrives on Earth he is only an AS2, Angel Second Class.

 

This gem of a movie opened two weeks before Christmas in 1946 but it didn't do very well.  It wasn't until 1974 when it began airing on network television that it gained a huge following.  Ever since then the movie is shown during the holidays and is a wonderful reminder that life is all about love and taking care of each other.

As Clarence writes in his thank you note to George: "No man is a failure who has friends.  Thanks for the wings.  Love, Clarence."