I had started typing a post last night about the countdown to Christmas and the frenzied state that we all are in during these last few days before the Big Day. I didn’t finish it and left it with all good intentions to complete it today. Today was another crazy day with carpooling kids to the mountain to go snowboarding and skiing, running some errands, making some gifts, then back to pick up a child to take to the dentist for mom and son cleanings, then food shopping and finally, exhausted and home. All the while I was out I was complaining, complaining –about how long the lines were (yes, we do have lines in Vermont although they are shorter than New Jersey lines), how long this was taking, the road was closed for an accident, it was snowing, blah…blah…blah – I was very whiny this afternoon.

We ate dinner and I sat down at my computer, scanning email and facebook. Of course I hadn’t been here all afternoon so the page I had left open was still there….only with messages from hours before. I saw a message from my sister-in-law that she was heartbroken and followed it up with a phone call to my brother. It seems that a good family friend of her family – a second dad to her, passed away suddenly this morning of a heart attack.

Wow.

Talk about putting it all in perspective and taking you down a notch or two from your high horse. I deleted that post immediately, it seemed so irrelevant and trivial. Here I was bitching and complaining about how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it in and …we’ll you get the picture. This family lost a father two days before Christmas in a sudden and devastating manner – little warning. This man’s live ended suddenly – I cannot even say how much I feel for them… I know how simply surrealistic it seems to have a parent one minute and he be gone the next.  My heart and prayers go out to the family….I feel simply foolish for complaining as I have over the past several hours…life is so precious, so short and should not be taken for granted, we forget when we get tangled up in all the trappings of the “perfect” holiday.

 

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