Christmas 2009 without Mom

Christmas is a time of thinking of past holidays, the reason for the season, and family and friends. This Christmas is the first one without Mom in all my years. I have been struggling to recapture the mood of the season and the thing that helped the most turned out to be working with hospice two days caroling. It does your heart good to find nurses so concerned about the patients, their family, getting treats for the pets and coats for the grandkids of patients. For all the bad times, there are more good folks than you read about in the newspaper. This fall after burying Mom, I was robbed as have many around me, and had to go to gates across the driveway and a burglar alarm system. Yet I met as an installer someone who I taught water sampling to years ago, heard from an operator, traveled Muhlenberg and McLean County by church bus and got to revisit dozens of old spill site cases, and was treated for lunch by Santa Claus twice. One of my blessings at a time like this year was to find how much friends and family meant. It is a blessing I can still remember my Papaw on Christmas visits to the farm and how it was for him to read Rip Kirby to me from the Messenger. Live long and prosper and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and enjoy having Reindeer fly.